the music of ambient loop guitarist dave stafford and the pureambient microlabel

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DECADE BY DECADE – THE LIVE CONCERT EXPERIENCE / OVERVIEW

Episode 2: 1980s

Most of the musicians I know, share with me, a general sense of … horror is really the only word that suits, although it’s not exactly the right word…at the memory of the music of the 1980s – which included but was not limited to – everything bad about the emerging synthesizer, synths badly played and not sounding very good at all – and all of the other early musical crimes of the early and middle 80s.

A lot of bad, bad music was made in the name of quickly producing a hit MTV Video – trying to cash in on the video craze – and things were decidedly NOT about the music, as they definitely HAD been in the 1960s and 1970s.

I try not to remember some – or even most – of those songs and bands, and when I hear them – they make me uncomfortable at best, and downright unable to listen in others – they are just not the best songs nor are they, for me, the best musical memories – those will always belong to the late 60s / early 70s when Prog ruled the land – and I looked out at the 70s Music Scene – my own “70s Scenario” – and saw that it was good.

Meanwhile, over on the hard rock scene, another disturbing trend was emerging, again, fuelled by MTV videos – albeit part of a different demographic – one populated mainly by teenage boys – within that demographic “MTV Video enthusiasts” – and with a clear desire to cash in on the video craze – Hair Metal (later known as “Glam Metal” – fair enough) had arrived, and it looked like it was trying to stay (thankfully – it did not) – or at least – it did not stay for long.

Bands that I literally could not understand the appeal of, whose music was made so cheaply and nastily (and that was, unfortunately, reflected in the SOUND of that music, too!), just so another air-brushed group of four hooligans with MASSIVE HAIR could make a few million dollars at our expense – and the punishment for us, was having not only to hear this vapid form of “metal”, but to SEE these ridiculous “hair” bands, who were all clearly about the size and curliness of their perm, and definitely NOT all about their skill as writers or musicians – let’s face it, a lot of those bands – could not write a song to save their life, and their musicianship ranged from barely adequate to definitely sub-par.

With the emergence of a whole new breed of Hair Metal bands on the one hand, and the pop / synth / Revolution Of The Synthesizer that was coming to our TV screens and to our ears mostly from Great Britain – there was a lot to answer for “musically” during the 1980s. Across the pond (where I live now) in this Synth Revolution – a similar and parallel activity was apparent – pop songs written just so a synth or synths could be used in the video, but which probably had no other good reason for existing.

Back in the 1970s (which suddenly looked pretty darn good to me) synths were used in the arena of Progressive Rock, but they were wielded by men and women of skill and talent, and used on songs that were finely crafted and worked on for often, many weeks or even months – until perfected. Music created for the sake of music, of pure musicianship made by real artists – craftsmen – people who had studied their instruments and knew how to use them – finely crafted songs, that were challenging and often quite difficult to perform – but rewarding in every sense – there is nothing on earth quite as satisfying as a musical composition that works on every level – including, exciting to perform and hear, in live performance. I missed that, especially within the recorded music of the 80s, I didn’t at first, feel there was much around of any real quality.

I got the feeling that with the whole Synth Pop Revolution (which, while it did have it’s roots in the late 1970s, to my mind, is mostly, a 1980s phenomenon) coming from Britain and the Hair Band revolution emerging from LA – that they would have spent just a few days on each piece, and no more – clock is ticking, time is money – and meanwhile, again mostly in LA “…and I have to go and get a new perm, so please let’s wrap this up”. I can just about picture any session by one of these bands – where a lot of time is spent pouting into mirrors, and gazing adoringly at your own magnificent curly blond locks – or whatever it was.

But – as the 1980s wore on – there was a quiet musical revolution going on in the background. It didn’t belong to any one group or any particular type of group, but rather, was a combination of a number of interesting events and occurrences in the 1980s, that were probably not brought to the fore in the news coverage (or, the MTV News Coverage) of the day. This was not, however – a revolution of recorded music – but instead – of live performance.

I am thinking in particular of two cases or scenarios – or “types” if you wish – one, where established artists who had worked very hard in the 1970s or even 1960s, to establish themselves and their musical credentials – some of these artists, after being vilified and ridiculed by the punk movement – waited out the last few dismal years of the 1970s (as progressive rock was nearly wiped from the map by first, punk, in Britain, and then New Wave in the U.S) waiting for an opportune moment to put their head above the parapet to find out if they were still as resoundly resented as they had been…

But I think that those established artists, whether ordinary rock artists or progressive rock “musos”, it didn’t matter, they were all realising that they could not only survive in the unfriendly 1980s – but in some cases, in many instances – they could thrive. In particular – on the live concert circuit. And live performance is exactly what that first of two groups of musicians I am thinking of has in common with the second group – new emerging bands, who, while their music may have been “born” in a calendar year that indicated that it was in fact, still the 1980s – while that was undeniable, what was also very apparent, was that there was a kind of “backlash” – there was a hankering for the recently-departed 1960s and 1970s.

Some bands were not afraid to boldly embark on brand new careers, in the 1980s, playing music that on paper, did not and would not “work” in the wonderful “look ma I’ve got a synthesizer” world of MTV, or “look ma, I got me a perm and now the Record Company has given us a $500,000.00 advance on our album” heady days of the early Eighties – that was still going on, although perhaps to a lesser degree in the latter half of the 1980s – but at the same time, my two Secret Musical Forces – were also at work, working hard to bring out music of quality in the Decade That Quality Forgot.

And to their credit, they did it. What tipped me off to it, was a strange but undeniable fact – OK, I had been fortunate enough to have seven years in the 1970s, when I was witness to some of the most amazing live music ever performed anywhere at any time in history – I was lucky enough to be alive and be old enough, to attend shows by now-legendary Progressive Rock and Rock acts – and there will never be a time like the 1970s again. What I had noticed – was that, the quality and availability of good livemusic, seemed to be on the rise in the 1980s – NOT declining as you might have thought.

Punk gave us the good shake up we needed (in hindsight, that is undeniable), and as much as I resented the damage that punk and to a lesser degree, New Wave, did to Prog – I needn’t have worried, because not only was Prog alive and well in the 1980s, but there was also an entire parallel music scene, that you could choose to attend, so for every Eurhythmics show that I didn’t attend, there was a show built on the basis of quality music – whether that be Prog Bands from the 1970s, or other 70s act, adapting, surviving and even flourishing, during the musically-depressing 1980s.

I could, in the space of a few weeks, attend shows by Crowded House (the remnants of New Zealand progressive rock heroes “Split Enz”) – who I also happened to see play live in 1981 – one of the first shows I attended in the 1980s – and in a way, you could not really get more prog than that in 1981…

…despite the band making a very poppy record – 1980’s “True Colours” – they had a still-beating prog heart – and their natural successor, Crowded House, who later went on to even more dizzying heights of success – but – as a pop band – not a prog band – or – stalwart live performers like ex-Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson; or new bands like Marillion, whose music sounded like it was straight out of 1974 – and yet – strangely – it was 1985 – now that was a surprise!

A diverse and exciting mix of live performers then – all out touring, all bringing in large audiences, all being quietly successful while MTV continued to trumpet the “news” that the world was now ruled by Synthesizers, and informing us that “Don’t You Want Me (Baby)” (or whatever it’s called) was a really, really good song (it isn’t).

Brian Eno himself, the once-flamboyant feather-adorned synthesizer-player of the legendary art-rock outfit Roxy Music, stated that punk was “a breath of fresh air” and over time, while at first unsure – I did come to totally agree with that sentiment. Prog was in need of a shake up – but the media portrayed it more like a death in the family, so for a couple of very depressing years – we were left with an apparent void, which was being filled by the practitioners of punk and new wave from say, 1978-1980.

But – once the air had been cleared, there was no reason in the world for the rock or prog bands that had been swept up in the Great Cleansing – to lay down their instruments and quit – and in fact – most of them did not give up – they may have taken time off during a period in which it might have been difficult to fare well, but…

…eventually – sometimes sooner, sometimes, much, much later – they would in fact, return – and, join a growing number of newly emerging 80s artists who were neither Synth-playing robots nor Hair Metallists – but in fact, were just playing different kinds of rock music – from an only slightly-disguised version of progressive rock (Marillion channelling early Genesis) to a band like Crowded House, who took their prog Split-Enz roots (see what I did there!) and mutated into one of the finest pop bands the world has ever known.

For me – I was even fortunate enough to see one example of these two “groups” of mine – the two Secret Warriors Of Quality Music – on the same bill at the same show – as I was fortunate enough one year, during the 80s, to see Crowded House playing – with the great Richard Thompson as “support act” (!!). On paper – that just seemed all wrong to me – but as a concert – it was actually brilliant – Thompson is a guitarist extraordinaire, a consummate master, and to have someone of his skill and experience opening for the less-experienced but really, no less talented Finn Brothers (of Crowded House and Split Enz fame) was strange but wonderful – and actually, an inspired idea.

Even more remarkable was the fact that during Crowded House’s set, Richard Thompson came out with his guitar to play on one of their songs – so here we had a standard-bearer from the long-ago 1960s, an ex-member and founding member of the great Fairport Convention – on stage with a bunch of musical upstarts from New Zealand.

I got a genuine laugh at the time, from hearing young Neil Finn taunting Thompson verbally, calling him a “guitar hero” and so on – it was hilarious.

Some combinations of musicians, you think to yourself – “that could never happen” – and there I was, hearing Richard Thompson improvising a solo to “Italian Plastic” by Crowded House. Very strange times indeed – but, at that moment – and during countless other 1980s concert moments – the quality of this live music – drove all thoughts of big hair and synth robots right out of my head – and I could live in the moment again, and experience quality live music again.

It was almost as if, the 1960s and 1970s had just carried on without interruption. almost as if punk and new wave had never happened – and by the mid 1980s, I felt that the old bands were definitely on the way back “in” (I mean, just look at the massive resurgence of interest and huge popularity of both Jethro Tull and of ZZ Top – two bands definitely of the previous decade – yet, in 1987, 1988 – enjoying an immense and very real popularity that required no hype from MTV to propel it) – if anything, these bands began to turn the tables on MTV, and by 1987 – you were far more likely to see an awesome video by ZZ Top or Jethro Tull, than you were to see the dread “Don’t You Want Me (Baby)” video.

But what groups am I talking about here, in my two imagined groups? Well, the easiest way for me to document that, is to turn first to my setlist.fm entries for the period of time, to get a sense of the shows I was attending – and once I have refreshed my failing memory there, I will be able to jot those down as I hope, valid examples of the two types:

Type Uno

– (Existing) Prog Rock or Rock bands and artists returning to music in the 1980s – at first, possibly more represented by concert appearances than by records, but by the end of the 1980s, they were producing smash hit albums that sold very, very well and were often award-winning and more popular than anything that we now consider to be “Classic 80s Rock” or “Classic 80s Dance” or whatever. It was Jethro Tull, not Billy Idol or Gary Numan, scooping up awards for best album – and if that isn’t a shock result, I don’t know what is!

But what a brilliant result – I was very, very happy for Ian Anderson and co – to have survived punk, then, to have survived – and then, defeated the 1980s – that is testament to the commitment and vision of Ian Anderson – he managed, somehow, to keep Jethro Tull afloat through all that tribulation – and then, emerge successfully. at the end of their ordeal – with an award-winning hit record – I have to heartily congratulate him on that feat of persistent vision. Brilliant work!

The great ZZ Top carved an equally impressive path through the myriad labyrinth of late 1980s music, and even did so with an only very-slightly updated sound – I remember seeing them in 1975, a raw, powerful blues band with real talent and skill – and here it was now, some 12, 13 years later, near the end of the 1980s – and they were back with…guess what – powerful, bluesy music – with several massive hit records included in their late-1980s successes. Another brilliant success story almost exactly parallel to the story of Jethro Tull in the late 1980s.

But Jethro Tull and ZZ Top are highly visible, very popular groups – there were a surprising number of other bands in this category – and now I am referring to my setlist.fm listing for the 1980s – one of those bands, is the remarkable Queen. 1980 saw Queen produce an arguably very unique record in their canon, the much-overlooked “Jazz” album – and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see them, very last-minute – and I am so, so glad that I did – again, it was in live performance where these rock and prog bands of the 1970s excelled, and Queen always put on an impressive performance.

Brian May to me, is one of the most interesting guitarists that Britain ever produced, with a very, very different and very, very unique guitar sound that no one else has ever really successfully replicated. Queen built a whole new reputation during the 1980s – moving from the dramatic, prog-inspired heavy rock of their early and mid-70s albums, to much more sonically challenging records such as 1980s “Jazz” – and a host of other brilliant records – so again, very popular band in the 1970s – somehow managed to catapult themselves into massive popularity and success during the 1980s.

A First Time For Everyone

Split Enz – the precursor to the above mentioned Crowded House, Split Enz was New Zealand’s premiere progressive rock band in the 1970s, with a huge underground following and some of the most interesting and quirky music ever created in any country – by 1980, they had gradually been leaving the trappings of prog rock almost entirely behind, and by the time I saw them in in early 1981 – their “True Colours” album was riding high in the charts, a huge pop success thanks mostly to the tune “I Got You” – sung, incidentally, by Neil Finn, the future leader of Crowded House – rather than by Tim Finn – the actual (original) lead singer of Split Enz. Well – one of two lead singers in the original band is perhaps, more accurate.

I will never forget being at that show, sitting there in the audience – I could clearly see the muscles in the then-very young Neil’s throat moving, moving as in a panic response – in pure fear, as he opened his mouth to sing this huge hit song – I believe this was the band’s first trip to America, and very possibly, their first show of the first tour of America – and the poor guy was scared half to death. He needn’t have worried – the song, and the band, were received rapturously by the audience – I was absolutely blown away by the quality of musicianship (and, it was the first time I got to see the amazing Eddie Rayner on keyboards – the man is a genius) and seeing Split Enz – even in their later, “pop” persona – was a wonderful and utterly unforgettable experience – one of my favourite bands of all time.

(Note: Split Enz / Crowded House is the only band to appear in both the Type Uno and the Type Dos categories – because Split Enz was an existing Progressive Rock Band from the early 1970s, while Crowded House was a New, Emerging Band in the early 1980s that just happened to be made up of ex-members of Split Enz – so they get entered once – very early 1980s – as “Existing Prog band” and once again – early 1980s), as “New Emerging Pop band”. A remarkable feat – being the only band that managed to straddle two very dissimilar groupings!).

A man who needs no introduction, the late, great Frank Zappa – I honestly don’t think that any change in musical styles ever affected the forward velocity of this man – one of our greatest modern composers, and a genius at getting bands to play impossible music with impossible chops – there is nothing on earth like a Frank Zappa led and directed live performance.

I place him in the “existing Prog” category although Prog isn’t exactly the right way to describe the sheer genius of Zappa – I really think he remained unaffected by punk, unaffected by MTV – unless there was some aspect of it that he could manipulate to further his own aims – in which case – he would. I think of all of the “existing artists” out there – that Frank just sailed through the 1960s. 70s and 80s without batting an eye – all just water flowing under a large musical bridge – while Frank was busy composing, arranging, or playing the most amazing lead guitar the planet has ever experienced – only Fripp and Hendrix are in the same league – and he could have taught those two a thing or two I feel certain lol.

So while I include FZ in this category – he was gloriously unaffectedby the basic stupidities of (most) 1980s music. Lucky guy, I would say.

This list of Existing Prog bands that came back in the 1980s (that is, if they were ever really “gone” in the first place) would not be complete without both the redoubtable and resilient Yes, who continued to make music in the 1980s, undergoing a radical musical transformation that I personally, in the main, do not enjoy (I was left cold by the Drama album and tour – a 70s-meets-80s experiment that in my opinion, simply did not work) but I have to acknowledge, it gave them a new lease on life that carried them far into the future, while Genesis, the Hardest Working Band In Prog (maybe) were being led by their undeniably charismatic “new” lead singer, one “Phil Collins” – and the success that Collins and co enjoyed during this decade where Prog was NOT King – is undeniable – and must have been so, so galling to the various departed members of the band who had only been with the band during the years of debt – among those, being original lead singer Peter Gabriel and renowned but long departed original guitarist Ant Phillips.

He became a star in his own right, without Genesis, and was extremely popular with prog rock fans plus a whole new generation of fans that came to his music first, through his now-famous series of eponymously-titled albums – the first three (or four – see below) albums all being entitled “Peter Gabriel” – the fourth, finally getting an “actual” title – “Security” – although according to Wiki – it’s actually called…”Peter Gabriel”. So there are four – not three !

Note: the fact that the first four Peter Gabriel albums had no title beyond “Peter Gabriel” (with the exception of the final one, which was ‘sometimes also known as “Security” ‘), was apparently really just too difficult for some people to understand or relate to – so interestingly, to make it easier for those who found this concept (which was Gabriel‘s idea – he wanted it to be like a newspaper – the same paper, with the same headline – but coming out at different times with different stories in them) too difficult – so people invented “names” for the albums based solely on the cover art – so strangely, many people “know” these three classic records as “Car” (Peter Gabriel I”); “Scratches” (Peter Gabriel II) and “Face” or “Melting Face” (Peter Gabriel 3). For the fourth – well, it somehow acquired the “name” “Security”.

Personally – I like the original titles and the idea of it having the same title every time – that was unique – but – apparently this was too much of a stretch for some possibly less-pliant minds – so they invented these somewhat lame cover-art related “names” – for three albums that already had perfectly good names – or, rather, a perfectly good name. It’s funny what lengths people will go to, to “force” something unusual or out-of-the-ordinary into terms that they are comfortable with – great lengths, it would seem, sometimes.

So along with Yes, Genesis, and Peter Gabriel, the 1980s was also an amazing time for one of the most underappreciated and hugely talented individuals that early 70s (or in this case, actually, late 1960s) progressive rock ever produced – and of course I am talking about the remarkable Peter Hammill, of the band Van Der Graaf Generator (which, incidentally, is still going strong after re-forming in 2005) – the 1980s saw Hammill evolving his solo performances, which were originally, just himself sat at the piano or sat with an acoustic guitar, singing “solo versions” of Van Der Graaf Generator songs (the bulk of which, were written by Hammill – the main writer and only lyricist in the band) as well as, singing songs from his rapidly-expanded selection of solo albums.

I was lucky enough to see Peter Hammill on several occasions, in differing musical settings, during the 1980s, and while I truly wish I had been able to see Van Der Graaf Generator play live “back in the day” – seeing these solo performances was actually, in a way, a far more powerful and intimate experience. I have had the good fortune, for example, to witness Hammill, on his own at the piano, playing his remarkable suite of songs which make up the second side of his 1980 solo album “A Black Box” – a song called “Flight” – which is so difficult to play, that I was only able to work out, myself – on the piano – the first part of the song.

By far the simplest part of “Flight”- “Flying Blind” is the first of the several shorter songs that make up “Flight” in it’s entirety – whereas, Hammill reeled off the thousands and thousands of notes and chords of the entire 20 plus minutes long piece – as if it were nothing, all the while singing in that incredibly powerful, moving voice of his – seeing him play and sing “Flight” – live – by himself – as the encore of a remarkable live show – was an absolutely unforgettable experience for me.

A few years later, I was fortunate again, to see Hammill bring one of his small “ensembles” to Los Angeles, back to the Roxy which was where he always seemed to play when he was here in the US – this small group included just two other members, former Van Der Graafbassist Nic Potter, and “pub musician” Stuart Gordon on violin.

But these two musicians – were no ordinary musicians, and I had no idea what an amazing musical experience we were all about to have – with Potter anticipating every phrase, every pause, in Hammill‘s incredibly strange vocal arrangements – and coming in on time, unfailingly – to Stuart Gordon’s “square wave violin” (my mental term for it – his violin run through guitar effects to achieve some unbelievably beautiful and/or dissonant effects) and the renditions that this band did of tracks such as “Cat’s Eye / Yellow Fever” – with it’s throbbing bass line, power chord guitar (provided by Hammill, of course!) and wild super-effected/treated violin gyrations.

I had never heard just three people sounding like a full on prog outfit on a tiny stage like the stage at the Roxy was. What a show (you can hear a version of that show, on the Hammill album “Room Temperature” – Live – and well worth the investment I would say) it was – absolutely unforgettable – a brilliant experience.

In some ways, then, the 1980s portion of Peter Hammill’s career, moving through the amazing solo records of the early 1980s – starting with “A Black Box” (which, to give you some perspective, in 1980, this was Hammill’s TENTH solo album!) and then moving on to his very popular and quite hard rocking 1981 offering “Sitting Targets” – and then as the decade progressed, I saw tours for albums such as 1986’s “Skin” which was at yet a whole ‘nother level – the man is incredibly prolific, and each time, has a larger and larger back catalogue of songs to draw on – so that towards the end of that time, the range and power of songs that he could pull from that remarkable inventory of sensitive, emotional, moving songs became extraordinary in the extreme.

Each concert became the showcase for such a broad range of emotions and such an incredibly diverse and remarkable selection of songs, that it was just almost too much to take. What an extraordinary range and depth of feeling this man commands from the stage, with this intense and wonderful body of work that is “the Peter Hammill solo catalogue”…and it is still growing today (as of June 6, 2018 the count of his solo albums is 37 in Wikipedia), as he continues to produce albums regularly despite now being in his 70s. What a remarkable character!

My 1980s was inhabited by all of these kinds of musical heroes – so my interest in, and my time spent listening to, what was supposedly currently popular “music” – began at a wane and pretty much disappeared completely as more and more of these amazing bands and artists from the 1960s and 70s, arrived in town in the 1980s to remind me that they were far from gone – that they were, in fact “alive and well and living in….” to phrase a coin (thanks, Ian!).

But the list is far from complete – Todd Rundgren, and, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia – the popular 1970s comedic band “The Tubes” (they of “White Punks On Dope” fame) – so many bands from the 70s, were doing so surprisingly well in the 1980s – and, were out there on the road – proving that their music was truly alive and was far, far more real than what MTV was presenting to us as purportedly, the music of the times – that was not MY experience of the 1980s.

It was only starting in 1981 that even more significant groups began to return, still working in Type Uno here – and this was a real surprise entrant – the return of the mighty King Crimson – after a seven year hiatus – Robert Fripp had returned, with only one former member of any former version of the band (Bill Bruford, on drums and electronic percussion) in tow – having created a totally re-imagined version of the band, and the success of their debut album (1981s total return to form, “Discipline”) and tour cannot be underestimated.

I can remember myself and the guys in my band, we were FLABBERGASTED at the idea that King Crimson was on tour, and was going to be playing in San Diego – at the UCSD gymnasium, of all places – but hey – we didn’t care – it was KING CRIMSON – alive and well. This new version of King Crimson, featured bassist and Chapman stick expert Tony Levin, and the unstoppable Adrian Belew on lead guitar and lead vocals.

This “new” band, the utterly revitalised and recharged King Crimson – was nothing short of extraordinary.

To see a concert, in 1981, by what was supposedly at this time, a “dinosaur” band like “King Crimson” – a concert that had more musical quality in it’s worst moment, than some 1980’s “bands” could produce in an entire show – this concert was really, in comparison to most concerts – an experience of almost high art – rock music, progressive, intelligent music – elevated to a new plane of existence, with the interlocking musical gamelan of the Fripp & Belew Lead Guitar Axes Of Power – over one of the most powerful and unique rhythm sections ever envisioned – this was four of the best musicians on the planet, getting together to play a dozen or so of the most amazing songs that you had never heard.

The band did also include one or two “old” King Crimson songs, thrown in – probably more for the sake of nostalgia – or, more likely, because the new members of the band wanted to PLAY those songs lol – this concert was a sublime musical experience, that absolutely blew my mind – I could think of nothing else, for weeks, but that amazing, beautiful music I had witnessed – and I listened to the album constantly, trying (and failing, dismally) to unlock it’s musical secrets – what an extraordinary musical document.

I think for me – that was the turning point – seeing King Crimson play for the first time ever; and seeing Peter Hammill and Bill Nelson and Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel and Genesis and Yes – all playing music in the early 1980s – when television might have you believing that something called “Billy Idol” was ruling the video-waves – the air-waves having now been superseded by the medium of Music Television.

Or – by someone called “Gary Numan” who apparently, was the next big thing – and I am not in any way disrespectful towards these artists – I very much respect their achievements and enjoy their music, too – and yes, they did make records in the 1980s, and sell records, and become “very popular” and so on.

But behind the scenes, in the background – were truly great (often very under-appreciated) musicians, with far more experience (and skill, I am afraid, too) who were out on the road, proving that their music was very real indeed, given concerts displaying consummate skill and musical vision – and perhaps – at least slightly more real, than the perceived vision of what music was as presented by “MTV” and “MTV News”.

But sometimes, you have to judge by a different yardstick, and increasingly for me, it was a very, very musical yardstick – i.e. did this concert move me to tears? Was the guitar playing such remarkable work of impassioned quality, that it will haunt my memories for years to come? Those were the kinds of questions that I was walking away from concerts asking myself – concerts mainly by the supposedly long-dead “dinosaurs” of music – the progressive rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. It was no longer really about what was supposedly popular – for me, it was becoming just about music, quality music – and nothing much else mattered.

And that is how I have really remained, to this day – I am not interested in what band sells the most records. I am interested in what band or artists or guitarist or other instrumentalist – can do something never done before, or something unique, or something truly beautiful or skillful or ingenious. Or – in some rare cases – all of the above.

That is what I was already evolving into in the 1980s, because I was seeing all of these amazing bands, behind the scenes – behind the very false, fabricated MTV Video World of “Music” and the MTV “Video Music Awards” and so on – none of that was what was real – what was real, were the opening notes of the title track of “Discipline” – the first piece played by the new King Crimson at their concert here held at UCSD gymnasium.

To start a concert, with the final piece and the title track of your first album in over seven years – that is very probably the single most difficult to perform out of an entire album of truly difficult to perform songs – coming out and playing that song FIRST, makes a statement – that says “we can do THIS” – and “THIS” – is simply the part you had to hear, you had to be there – to believe – perfectly interlocking guitars over a sinuous and sliterhing bass part with an insistent, cymbal-less beat throbbing behind it – modern music taken to a whole new level, in a time-signature that I still can’t count to this day.

What a way to START a concert!

So it was truly musical experiences like this, that really take you out of yourself, and really make you consider the nature of what is beautiful, what is dissonant, how and when dissonance can be in itself, beautiful, and so on – music that MAKES you think – and think, and think. That is how the music of “Discipline” made me feel at the time. What a great way to celebrate the return of the much-missed King Crimson – we were SO glad they were back, and this career was to be short lived, but, would lead to ever-evolving versions of the band – this particular version, what has become to be known, curiously enough, as “the 80’s Crimson” did the bulk of it’s work, first as the band “Discipline” in 1980, and then, as “King Crimson” in 1981 – lasting just four years and producing three fine albums.

But there is still more to this story – still more former prog or former rock musicians, coming out of the woodwork now, re-inventing themselves in startling and remarkable ways. Bill Nelson, former leader, lead singer, and lead guitarist of the 1970s prog/rock band “Be-Bop Deluxe” was out and about in the 1980s, fronting various versions of his 1979 creation “Bill Nelson’s Red Noise” and I saw one of these post-Red Noise concoctions play live at the Whisky in Los Angeles – and because it was the Whisky, and, Bill Nelson was one of my favourite English guitarists at the time – I took the opportunity to situate myself just in front of his pedalboard (which absolutely fascinated me, it was very, very long and thin and had about a dozen pedals on it, most of which, I was utterly unfamiliar with) and once again, I proceeded to have my musical thought processes melted away and re-formed several times during the evening’s proceedings.

Nelson is just one of those people that is ridiculously talented, and can make music with anything he turns his hand to. Tonight though – it was all about the guitar, and actually seeing him play, at such close range, was a rare privilege indeed for me – to be able to watch how he created the chord shapes and guitar parts that made up these songs that I so, so loved – “A Kind Of Loving” or “Do You Dream In Colour” or even the bizarre “Youth Of Nation On Fire”.

He played an outrageously cool selection of songs from his first couple of solo records – and it was again, an absolutely unique and totally unforgettable musical experience. What a show!

This show also included a real moment of drama, as Bill‘s beautiful pedalboard FAILED after one song, so, philosophically, he watched the technician hauling away his entire bank of effects – and saying something about how it may be difficult later on, when he gets into some of the more complex changes of sound… he then turned around, with a determined look on his face – plugged his guitar lead directly into his Music Man combo amp – tested a nice, chunky, distorted power chord – and launched into the next song – sans all effects.

Hearing that song played with raw, straight, unaffected guitar – was an absolute revelation for me – an amazing experience – of a true artist’s grace under pressure – he handled it like a pro – no problem – just got on with the song, sang and played it beautifully, and then happily, took delivery of his now-repaired pedalboard just in time for the next song to begin.

They never really missed a beat – the whole “incident” only slowed the show by literally, two minutes – and what a unique and unusual thing to witness – that made it particularly unforgettable – getting to hear the absolutely raw – guitar-straight-into-amp Bill Nelson style – and it ROCKED. He didn’t lean on his pedals for support to hide weak playing, as some players (myself included – I hasten to add) do – he used them to enhance and improve the sound of his guitar. But – I could have happily watched and listened to the whole show with the guitar-directly-into-amp scenario, too – with – or without a big pedalboard full of exotic gutiar effects – either way is absolutely fine by me.

I would say that during the first few years of the 1980s, that Bill Nelson re-invented himself and his music, on a par and very much in parallel, with the way Robert Fripp re-invented and re-imagined his own role in the new King Crimson. Gone were the trappings of “rock star” / Be-Bop Deluxe frontman Nelson – no more costumes or make-up or TV appearances were needed – no more limousines – just – music – music as experiment, and I can remember buying his first solo single, the aforementioned “Do You Dream In Colour?” on 7 inch vinyl which included two B-sides that I liked even better than the A side – and that was the start of a truly remarkable series of records – that moved through areas of music that I can scarcely describe using just words – those words would be “GO now, and listen, ye, to these two albums”:

See – now I don’t need to try and describe how incredibly diverse and musically amazing those two early solo records are – not to mention – some of the most astonishing lead guitar work I had ever heard Nelson play – even on the opening track of “Quit Dreaming…” a song called “Banal”, ironically enough – there is a solo so dramatic, so silken smooth and flowing – so, NOT “banal” in any way – and I think that is the point – you have this hard-edged, almost frightening riff playing throughout this song – but when it finally bursts into this solo – you get a few moments of the old 1970s Be-Bop Deluxe sweet sweet flowing lead guitar on 1980s steroids – simply amazing guitar work on this record – other pieces of note include one of my personal favourites of Bill’s – another strange one, “U.H.F.” which has a beautifully-flanged lead vocal, and again, absolutely amazing, dissonant / unique lead guitar throughout – this one is another that is just astonishing in terms of the quality and passion of guitar playing – it’s off the scale, it really is.

So Bill Nelson – in the early 1980s – was in every way, an ever-exploring pioneer of new kinds of musics, and his bands were hand-picked to deliver that music with the greatest impact. I was so, so fortunate that I was able to drive up to Los Angeles to see that gig – what an absolutely unforgettable night that was!! Standing there, just a few feet away from someone with such consummate skill with the guitar – it seemed effortless to him – autopilot on, and now – play. sing. perform.

But – it was a faultless, unbelievably professional, polished performance – Bill took his bands and his music very seriously indeed, and this outfit was more than road-worthy – they played his music – the way it was meant to be played.

I have now, I believe, spent more than enough time talking about Type Uno artists – however – believe it or not, I didn’t even make it past about 1983 in assembling the examples above. If I were to continue on in this vein for the rest of the 1980s, I would add in another dozen or so examples of Type Uno artists – those ex-rock or ex-prog musicians who, for the most part – trod a very different path in the 1980s, from what their previous careers back in the 1970s had been.

And sometimes, as in the case of both King Crimson and Bill Nelson – that led to some absolutely extraordinary music and, live concerts that represented that recorded music. I felt so, so fortunate to have been there to witness that – especially the re-birth of King Crimson – that was almost miraculous.

Crimson was one of several bands, that I literally thought I would never, ever get to see – because from my perspective – they had suddenly disbanded in 1974 – never to return as far as we knew.

So that was a welcome return to form – along with, experiencing the new musical directions of Bill Nelson, Peter Hammill or any number of existing, surviving rock and prog people – all of them, doing so incredibly well (who knew???) in the supposedly-musically-“dead” 1980s! The more I thought about it – the more I realised, that in some ways, the 80s were almost MORE musically rich for me than the 1970s were – for one thing, I got in a FULL 10 years of concert-going, versus the seven I had managed in the 1970s (and that was only due to my age – not through choice) – so I had an “extra” three years in which to have even more incredible 1980s concert experiences.

For another thing – these artists – who were AMAZING during the 1970s – had come back, bringing new ideas; new technologies; new ways of thinking about music; new recordings; and most importantly to me – concert tours where their faithful, loyal fans could still go and see and hear them play – and as often as not, I was totally surprised by how much these artists had grown and evolved – always, in such a positive way – that I now view the 1980s as a really, really positive decade – in terms of my overall, over-time concert experiences.

Who else, then – would I place into the Type Uno category – before I delve into Type Dos – well, a quick further check of setlist.fm’s listing for user “pureambient” (that’s me, by the way) reveals that the illustrious company noted above would also be joined by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, populists Hall & Oates (who I only became interested in, after hearing Daryl Hall’s remarkable collaboration with Robert Fripp, “Sacred Songs” from 1980 – another overlooked Fripp-produced masterpiece – and Fripp was so insistent that Hall was so good – that I had to go and see for myself. He was. He was an amazing singer).

Then, there was the early-80s version of Roxy Music which, by 1983 when I saw them for the second time, had mutated so far away from their original Prog roots, that they seemed to be a completely different band – one that very well might have been better named “The Bryan Ferry Orchestra” and be done with it – with Phil Manzanera and Andy MacKay physically present at the concert, but, reduced to the roles of glorified sidemen by the rather large ego of one Bryan Ferry…

The only redemption, for me, was that Phil Manzanera was permitted to perform ONE of his songs – and chose to play “Impossible Guitar” which I absolutely love – so I was fortunate to get to see that rarely-performed-live piece of brilliant guitar work – made an otherwise difficult to stomach Roxy concert, much more bearable. By way of contrast, when I saw Roxy in 1979, four years earlier – they were then already on their way towards this not-so-good musical place, but – there was still some prog left in them, and they played a few good versions of a few older tunes back in 79. Not so at the 1983 concert that I saw – which was pretty disappointing to say the least.

Adrian Belew – well, he was around in the 70s, although more in the role of very talented sideman to either Frank Zappa or later, David Bowie – and I felt very, very fortunate to get to see him with his original band, “Gaga” – at the wonderfully tiny San Diego State venue of The Back Door (a music venue so small, that even ***I*** have performed there in the past – lol).

Belew and his band were absolutely unbelievably talented, funny and skilled – and it was a truly memorable evening for fans of the eccentric electric guitarist – the only true successor to the performance spaces that Jimi Hendrix used to inhabit – Belew fills that void to some degree.

More gigs for guitarists – now this was another aspect of the remarkable, the impossible things that happened in the 1980s – that you would have thought, would either be impossible, or only could have happened in the 70s – but – not so – I am talking about now, one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen – Paco De Lucia, Al DiMeola, and John McLaughlin – what a line-up. Three legends of the guitar – each with their own style – and the combination of the three together, performing a variety of impossible pieces – was like nothing I had ever seen before and I am not likely to ever see again – everyone I know who went to this – will know what I am talking about – this was about skill, passion and grace – and these three gentlemen had lots of all of those things. It was…amazing.

A year later, the trio returned – and this time, joining them on steel string acoustic guitar – was none other than future Deep Purple lead guitarist and Dixie Dregs alumnus Steve Morse – a guitarist I have seen many times – with the Dixie Dregs (another group that is in this category, that I was lucky enough to see during the 1980s)

Later, Morse created the “Steve Morse Band” (yet ANOTHER group that is in this category, that I was lucky enough to see during the 1980s), I even got to see Morse performing at a guitar clinic in a local music store – an immensely skilled and talented player. Adding Morse to thattrio (DeLucia, DiMeola, and McLaughlin) – created the single most remarkable mini-orchestra of guitarists that the mind could imagine – the Impossible Quartet – and that show was even better than the standard trio show that I saw the previous year. What an experience!

And then – I went to see Allan Holdsworth. I was beginning to get into jazz, a little bit – I’ve never really played it, but, I do have huge respect for those that play it well – the “Pat Metheny”s and so on in this world – but – Allan Holdsworth – who, again, was around in the 1970s, so he definitely falls into the Type Uno category – is a guitarist on an entirely different Guitar Planet. To this day, I have never before or since seen a modern jazz guitarist, or in fact, any guitarist outside of the classical tradition, with the kind of a) encyclopedic knowledge of scales, modes, chords and….everything there is to know about a guitar fretboard and b) incredible, incredible, speed – I’ve never found another like Allan Holdsworth.

I can remember sitting on the edge of the stage, just watching his left hand, trying so hard to figure out what on earth chords he was playing – as he played through one of my very favourite of his pieces – “The Things You See (When You Haven’t Got Your Gun)” – and there is this beautiful beautiful chord progression, that he “swells” into a big delay and reverb setting – and it’s just sublimely beautiful,

And as I watched, I realised, that even with my twenty some odd years of guitar playing experience at that time – that I literally, had absolutely NO idea what those shapes indicated – I could not understand WHAT CHORDS the man was playing. I knew one thing though – they are beautiful. Still are.

Later, I found out why – when I got ahold of an Allan Holdsworth music book – and the title of the book pretty much explains why a guitarist of 20 years plus experience, had no idea what it was that he was seeing and hearing when watching Allan Holdsworth play – the book is called “Reaching For The Uncommon Chord”. THAT is why. Because he uses inversions that most people can’t even FORM with their fingers. “Uncommon” is exactly the right word – and seeing him play, hearing him do this – live – opened my eyes to whole new UNIVERSE of sounds and ideas that I think, I am still absorbing today – almost thirty years later.

What a remarkable guitarist – and a really nice person too, very approachable. Sadly, Allan passed away very recently – and it was a huge, huge loss to the guitar-playing, and listening, community. An absolute Hendrix-Order, Zappa-Order, Higher-Order guitarist unique in so very many ways. Not, however…for the faint of heart – Holdsworth is possible a musician best appreciated by other musicians as his playing style may be too intense for the public to absorb or appreciate. If there ever was a “guitarist’s guitarist” – it was Allan Holdsworth.

Every time I think I have exhausted the list of possibly Type Unos – I find still more to add to the list – the aforementioned Richard Thompson whose career soared during the 1980s – including a lot of excellent performances both on acoustic guitar and with full “electric” band – I was lucky enough to see both types – and also, the aforementioned band Richard used to be in, Fairport Convention, who also enjoyed a resurgence of their own during the late 1980s, possibly thanks to their close touring association with the unstoppable Jethro Tull.

At the end of the 1980s, re-emerged one of the first of the many, many, many different re-configurations of the band Yes – which featured the classic five man lineup of Yes without bassist Chris Squire. I went to see this strange band in 1989, whose first and only album was pretty underwhelming, largely because of the possibility of seeing these four ex-members of Yes, playing older Yes material live in concert.

It was – interesting. Originally, they had Tony Levin as their stand-in replacement for the very difficult to replace Chris Squire – and that was what I had been looking forward to – only to find out, that Levin had dropped out early on, and had been hastily replaced by Jeff Berlin. Now – Jeff Berlin is one of the most amazing bass guitarists on the planet. I’ve seen Berlin play in a tiny club with Allan Holdsworth and Chad Wackerman, and Berlin was actually, clearly, the bass-playing equivalent of Allan Holdsworth – they were a match. How Wackerman ever kept up with those too, will always be a mystery – stunning musicianship.

But Jeff Berlin is more of an improviser’s improviser, so the idea of him playing Chris Squire’s very inventive but, very structured bass parts – well, to my mind, it just seemed like a WEIRD idea. And in concert – well, Jeff was fine. Jeff played all the right notes – but the feel, was all wrong – he played with a jazz, loose feel, which did not suit Squire’s intended style – so it just sounded so odd to my ears. Not entirely successful – four experienced prog guys – with a super jazzy improvising loose bass player – no. I wished I’d seen the Levin version…but alas. ABWH were short-lived, and I think that is possibly a good thing. Yes is just not Yes without Chris Squire – let’s face it. It’s just not quite right without him.

Finally, again near the end of the 1980s, we had some glimpses of the future – Adrian Belew’s pop project, “The Bears” started making records and went out on tour, and I for one was very much enamoured of their approach – I loved the idea of two lead guitars, bass and drums, where often, both of the guitarists were playing “backwards guitar” as they sang and played live – I loved that. I have always been a huge fan of reverse guitar, and seeing the huge grins on the faces of Rob Fetters and Adrian Belew while they were both playing backwards – it’s as much fun to do, as it is to hear! I saw The Bears a number of times, and they are an extremely quality pop group as you would expect – excellent music.

And then – Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists – not a “band” in the traditional sense, this latest Fripp invention – was simply Fripp performing in public on acoustic guitar, with a group of the then-best Guitar Craft students. The repertoire was written in part by Fripp, and in part by members of “the League” and it’s a most interesting presentation – playing in Fripp’s “new standard tuning” for guitar – this was a most inspirational group to witness playing live – but in one sense, it’s also one of the most radical of re-imagining’s possible – to get from King Crimson in the 1960s and 1970s, to the League of Gentlemen in 1980, to the League of Crafty Guitarists in the late 80s and also, on into the future – that was Robert Fripp – always moving forward on so many different musical planes.

Type Uno groups that I did NOT see – the list is just staggeringly long, I am sure, but while I am on the subject – Robert Fripp’s “dance combo” the aforementioned League of Gentlemen” were one of the hottest musical properties of the year 1980. A four piece led by Fripp and ex-XTC keyboard wizard Barry Andrews – that is one band I really, really wish I had the opportunity to see play live. Ach well as they say…

Type Dos

– New, emerging bands, or, complete rebuilds of older bands that mutated into new bands – so in this category the most obvious is the one I have already mentioned, Marillion, and, the other one I have already mentioned, Crowded House.

This category does include a few bands that may well have existed in the very last part of the 1970s, but I would still class them as new not so much in that they are brand new in the 1980s, but they were not necessarily full-established or very experienced when compared to most of the Type Uno bands – many of whose roots went all the way back to the beginning of the 1970s or even into the 1960s.

There is a huge difference in an artist who formed a band in 1968, coming back to perform live and make records in the 1980s, and a band formed in 1979 that then continues on into the 1980s as part of their natural evolution – those to my mind, are “new emerging bands” – I have just taken slight poet license on when they emerged – and if I were to just adjust the time period, this silly concept of two types would work a bit better – but for now, it’s what I am working with.

The first half of the 1980s, for me – according again to my setlist.fm list of concerts attended – was a pretty sparse time for new bands with new music.

I did see a few of the most important bands of the 1980s, most notably, the great XTC, but there were far far more bands that I never did see – because mainly, to be totally honest – I was spending my time and my money, attending concerts by Type Uno artists – artists I knew and loved, and, who I knew would not let me down by giving a poor concert.

So I continued to attend concerts with a definite 1970s mindset – and that worked for me – and if you look at the list above compared to this listing of Type Dos shows attended – it’s absolutely pathetic in comparison. I was only making an almost-token effort to include Type Dos bands in my concert-going – but if truth be told – that was mainly because – there were not that many Type Dos bands that I really enjoyed the sound of.

In some cases, I wonder exactly why I went – for example, I attended an outdoor summer extravaganza, three bands playing live, beginning with Madness, then, Oingo Boingo, then, headliners The Police. Now this was a competently-performed set, all three bands had something to offer – but, in hindsight – I believe I enjoyed Madness far more than I enjoyed The Police. I was never that huge of a fan of The Police, and I think it was more about peer pressure – everyone at the place I was working was going to the show – so would I go? Sure – why not?

I have never, ever been a fan of the music of Danny Elfman, leader and creator of Oingo Boingo, and I just think it’s absolutely silly music – not for me, at all – meant to be “funny” – but – it isn’t. Madness were terrific – great energy, good chops – a lot of fun, and a lot of musical credibility. Then I suffered through Oingo Boingo. Then, I did enjoy the set by The Police but it was more about wow look at that drum kit or, wow, Sting really can play the bass AND sing at the same time – look – he’s doing it.

Or rather – doing part of it – they did have three background singers, which makes the whole idea of being “just a trio” a bit silly – and I felt it was really unnecessary. It seemed to me, that it would have been much, much better if we could have heard what JUST the three of them could do, live – now that might have been interesting. They played a competent set, with songs from every album including the then-new “Synchronicity” which for them, was ultra-complex. They did a credible job – but that’s what it seemed like, more of a chore, a task, a job to be done – they didn’t seem like they were having any fun at all – and their lack of enjoyment was contagious.

I hope that others will remember that concert more happily than I do, but my overall impression was of being underwhelmed by The Police, and not liking Oingo Boingo one bit (I still don’t). But – every cloud has a silver lining – at least I got to see Madness – they were great – awesome performance.

Still sticking with the mainstream, again, not really sure WHY I went – outdoor show in summer time? nice weather? for some inexplicable reason, I went to see Men At Work. It was not particularly memorable. I still do not know why I went. In this same category, I would place The Motels, a group I barely remember – and I don’t remember a particular song I like or anything – no idea. Those two shows – which I did attend – just flew past almost unnoticed.

I did also, however, see some very real and very powerful live performances – the aforementioned XTC among them – but I would say one other of those, was Gang Of Four. Now – this was a band I knew absolutely nothing about, I had not heard them play – and the other guitarist in my then-band, Slipstream absolutely INSISTED that I should go to this concert – so, we went – it was a long, long drive up to LA I remember – and I was absolutely transfixed and shocked by the band once they started playing. I have never before or since seen a band quite like this one – dark, powerful, with a lot on their minds – and deadly serious about what they were playing, and what they were saying.

With tunes like “(Love Like) Anthrax” or “Armalite Rifle” and heavily politically inspired lyrics, I found it to be a very powerful and musical experience. The music was – jarring. But – this “post punk” outfit – really stuck in my memory, and I am grateful to my pal in the band for being so insistent that I attend – because I am glad that I did. I hadn’t seen much or many bands that had a political agenda (unless you count U2 – which come on, you can’t seriously count U2???) so it was a breath of fresh air in that sense – not you ordinary love songs here – but songs that meant something. It was a really different musical experience too, and one that was thought-provoking at the very least.

Most important to me, was seeing XTC play live in what turned out to be, their last ever live performance – they played in San Diego where I saw them – and then, in LA the next night – they did not show up, because Andy Partridge was on his way home to escape a world of nightmares from touring and over use of prescription medications.

They never did really return to the stage – but – it also ushered in their “XTC’s Golden Age of Studio Recordings” – where, much like the Beatles – their music really, really changed once they left the stage behind for good.

XTC’s performance itself ,was absolutely amazing: Andy was filled with so much incredible energy, and the band were animated and lively – Dave Gregory was especially amazing – bouncing back and forth between lead guitar and lead synthesizer – and the band’s vocals were also great – Colin and Andy sounded so, so good together. I am so, so glad I went to this – I had been getting more and more into their music, and I thought why not – that should be a good show. I never dreamed for a moment, that I would witness the last live concert by the band – wow. What a shock to find out after the fact, that Andy had fallen very ill and returned to the UK – swearing that he would never perform live again. Sadly – he kept that promise – mostly.

After seeing Gang Of Four first, and then, XTC, in the first part of the 1980s – was unfortunately, for me, the highlight – the rest of my Type Dos experience wasn’t quite so memorable – but I will have a go anyway:

Starting with Asia – now, in one sense, you could almost class Asia as a Type Uno band – except – what band would that have been back in the 1970s? King Crimson? Yes? ELP? Because they were not a direct descendant of one particular band – I have to class them as Type Dos – but the music they brought to the mid-80s, definitely had more of the feel of a Type Uno band.

Asia then – as a new “prog” band – with ex-Family, ex-King Crimson bassist and vocalist John Wetton on bass and lead vocals, with Steve Howe. ex-Yes on lead guitar, and with Carl Palmer, ex-Emerson, Lake & Palmer on drums – and, some guy called Geoff Downes on keyboards – this was a “new” band, playing “new” music. Oh – I so, so wanted this band to be good…

Their debut album was a bit confusing – slightly proggy, but overlaid with a sort of sickly sheen of popiness that felt forced at best. It was just – weird. But I went to the show, to see the PLAYERS – not so much for the band, and certainly not for the album. And – the players were good – again, Wetton is more than competent he played and sang well – it was fine. Steve Howe did his usual high quality lead guitar work, nothing disappointing there – and Carl was a fine drummer for the outfit.

Perhaps it’s better if I just leave it at that – rather than try to analyse it any further – this SHOULD have been a great band, but I remember being so disappointed by everything – the album, the show – that I never bought (or heard) their second album, or anything they ever did after that. I just lost interest immediately. A missed opportunity. A failed attempt at commercial success? Something funny going on there – I don’t really know what. But somehow – it just did not work.

On a couple of occasions during the 1980s, I went to see Elvis Costello play, usually with the Attractions in tow – and this was one of those weirdly unsatisfying things – it should have been excellent – but it was just OK. They played well – very well. The songs are good – but something about it – it just did not have the excitement, nothing urgent, in a lot of ways, it did not seem like “live” music – but more, an accurate re-creation of studio music. I know that must sound weird – but I hope you can get what I am meaning.

On the surface – Elvis Costello and the Attractions put on a really good concert. But below the surface, there was something dissatisfying about the whole experience, that one could not put one’s finger on – I don’t know WHAT it was – but I felt let down, I felt disappointed – I think I thought that he would be amazing – and when he turned out to be just some guy with a guitar – well, I ended up feeling a sense of disappointment.

Then, things took a slightly upward turn, and the quality of the Type Dos bands I was going to see play, started to improve again – and that began with a gig by the revitalised Pretenders. I am so, so glad that I got to see this band play in 1984, and I think that Chrissie Hynde is absolutely a musical genius – to write these songs, to go to Britain and put this band together – and then to succeed so well – I am so so happy that she did this.

It didn’t last long – my personal favourite record of theirs being the astonishing Pretenders II – I think after those first two remarkable records – that things began to go downhill a bit – but when I saw them – they were at the height of their powers – and those were not insignificant. Chrissie herself, is a powerful performer, and her approach to her vocals and her guitar playing – stick in the brain, and she definitely left a good impression on me. I am very glad that I chose to go see this band play live – an awesome experience.

The Pretenders’ opening / support act, however, the much hyped The Alarm – left me pretty cold. I felt like they were competing for musical space with U2 – and to be honest – no one was, oris, competing for that space (!) – it’s not really a desirable musical space to inhabit !!! But they seemed to me, like a third-rate impersonation of U2 – and while that may be overly-cruel on my part – I cannot think of a kinder way to express what for me, is a true assessment of how The Alarm sounded – “68 Guns” – maybe – but none of them were loaded. Or they only brought 49 of those guns with them on this night – I am not sure.

Another double bill of new, emerging bands was Big Country with support from the forgettable Wire Train – and I think that my interest in Big Country was probably almost entirely derived from the fact that Stuart Adamson had been a huge fan of Bill Nelson = something he held in common with me. The band were fine, nothing wrong with them – but nothing hugely memorable, either. I can’t really remember Wire Train at all – much as I would like to say something about them – I cannot – I have absolutely no idea. So this was another one that just flew past me, almost unnoticed…

I have to mention (by contract I am afraid) that I did see the band Berlin, or at least, I saw part of their set – but I hasten to add this disclaimer – going to see Berlin was never my intention – I was going for one reason, and one reason alone – not to see Terri Nunn or hear her telling us about all the roles she could play – but to hear the opening act – Bill Nelson – with a full band, on the very short “Mountains Of The Heart” tour. And Nelson was amazing – he was not happy that night, as Berlin had used up all of the sound check time, leaving Nelson NO time to sound check his own band.

So, as retaliation (which, while juvenile in the extreme. was actually, appropriate under the circumstances) Bill decided to extend his set by an extra six or seven minutes – making Berlin wait, making Berlin late to get on stage – and he did this, much to MY good fortune, by taking a super-extended, in the spotlight, energy bow guitar solo – which was extraordinary – I’ve never heard of Bill Nelson doing this before or since – the last song had ended – but he continued playing his beautiful, powerful sustained e-bow sound – and he played and played and played – I was absolutely overjoyed. Eventually, he relented, thanking the audience and apologising for the short set – MADE short by the thoughtlessness of the people in the band Berlin.

So while I went to a Berlin concert – it was not to see Berlin, and I actually left during one of the first few songs of their unremarkable set. Going home was preferable to seeing Berlin play live. Seeing and hearing Bill Nelson play an amazing short set of fantastic songs, followed by a really long “spite” guitar solo – was absolutely astonishing. A fantastic experience!

Perhaps the single most significant of all of the Type Dos bands – would be Marillion. Bursting onto the scene in the early 1980s, but apparently believing that it was actually, still 1974 – this remarkable band of Englishmen led by one slightly mad Scotsman – became quite successful despite the fact that their music was a direct throwback to the 1970s – people didn’t seem to mind, because Fish and Marillion were brilliant on stage, Fish was incredibly friendly and personal both on and off stage, and the time that they flourished – up until 1987, when singer Fish left the band after the classic album “Clutching At Straws”. This was a great time in music.

Fish, having his remarkable, very, very prog-sounding outfit out on tour, making retro-prog albums, playing retro-prog live and everyone loving it – what a fantastic and probably impossible thing to happen.

I really enjoyed the music of Fish and Marillion during the 1980s, and even though they SOUNDED like a Type Uno band – they are definitely the archetype of a Type Dos band – a new emerging band with a unique presence and quality music, too.

On a short trip to Britain, by complete accident, I happened to go to see a Japanese heavy metal band, Vow Wow, playing at the Marquee in London. I wasn’t really meant to be there, I went almost by accident, but it was an enjoyable-enough experience – the band were OK, not great, but not bad – but for me, just being in the room where all of my Type Uno heroes had played – from the Move to King Crimson – was enough – at least I can say I’ve seen a show at the Marquee – OK, I wish it had been by a band that I knew, or that I liked – but – it was better than nothing lol.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. was another attempt at a sort of Asia-style supergroup, the ill-fated GTR. Now – I never did get the first GTR album – because after I saw them play – I would not have, and did not, want to have it. Again – this was touted as an amazing new group, led by two of the best guitarists in progressive rock – Steve Howe and Steve Hackett. To me – that was an irresistible combination of talent and skill – it HAD to be good !! It wasn’t.

There was nothing good about it – singer Max Bacon was so unremarkable, that all I remember is his name. I also do not know who else, apart from the two famous guitarists – was in the band. None of that mattered – because they just were not very good. I don’t remember or know a single song by them. It’s almost as if history, ashamed of itself, has erased most of the memories of this band – to hide it’s shame. And I am part of that – eager to believe in these two superhero guitarists – in practice – it was nothing but a huge let down – a real disappointment. Not recommended – at all.

Towards the end of the 1980s, I ended up seeing a truly mixed bag of new, emerging artists – Type Dos artists – which included the then-very-popular Suzanne Vega, a lesser-known but far more talented singer called Maria McKee, as well as, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of female singers – the band X from LA. I won free tickets to see X – which I enjoyed far more than I thought I might – I particularly enjoy John Doe’s singing.

Then came what I might term as the Unavoidable Event – part of you, really did not want to go – but – you felt like you were obliged to – everyone you knew – was going – so I held out for a long time – and then ended up getting really, really horrible seats for – at the back of the Sports Arena, in literally, the VERY top row – so far up, I am surprised I did not get nosebleed – and that didn’t help my enjoyment of the show.

Having a point of view from behind the stage did have advantages, I could see what The Edge was doing really well, and his confidence and obvious skill, along with his basic humility – well, his was an impressive performance. But sadly, U2 is not really about The Edge – it’s about one man, who I shall call, for the sake of humour – Knucklehead Smith. That guy – the leader of said band – was just as over the top, as loud, as not funny – as we all expected him to be. For me – he was the low point of the show. The band could play. But could he sing? Sort of.

It was OK. I wasn’t bad. Some of the songs were pretty exciting, and the guitar work could not be faulted. I suppose I am glad in a way, to give me a more well-rounded view of what the 1980s were all about – that I saw U2 live. But I could have done without Knucklehead Smith – he is one crazy dude.

The last concert I remember from the 1980s, was held in a tiny club, a concert given by a new guitarist on the scene, who was just releasing his very first album, which he called “Surfing With The Alien” . Once again, not quite sure why I was there – but I am very glad that I was – because I got to see the original, the most humble, the most basic Joe Satriani – before he became a “big star” – and it was a good, good concert – very modern, the guitar sounds were great, it was clear he was a really good player – and I left quite impressed with this young man and his guitar. The fact that he went on to such incredible heights of fame – and that it all began with that one album – and I was lucky enough to have been there, to see the birth – to see the very beginning of Joe’s very successful career as a guitarist – more power to him.

That – my friends – was my 1980s concert experience!

Never Thought I Would See The Day When…

I simply love live music, and really, there can never be enough good concerts each year – or each decade for that matter – there is always someone that I missed out seeing “back in the day” or newer artists that I want to check out live – there is always something going on. I feel very fortunate indeed that I have been able to see so many great concerts. Moving to Britain was also a hugely fortunate thing in terms of me being able to see bands performing live that did not regularly play in far-off San Diego, California (where I lived for the first half of my life) and so many bands that I never got the chance to see when I lived in California, I have not only seen but in some cases, I have been able to see performing live several times.

This includes bands or artists – and mind you, these are bands or artists that I firmly believed I would never, ever get to see play live – such as:

Caravan

Gong

Muse

Neil Young

To my ever-lasting astonishment, I did eventually get to see these four bands – and it was difficult to believe it was happening until the actual moment – came – and for example, with Neil Young, whose music I had loved since I was a teenager – at age 13, two of his songs were among the songs that the very first band I was ever in’s repertoire, so I basically grew up with Neil Young as the soundtrack to my life – but everytime he played in San Diego, I couldn’t go, or I didn’t find out until too late, or it sold out or any number of things – and I ended up never seeing him play.

Little did I imagine that I would see him years and years and years later, in Glasgow, Scotland, playing one of the most amazing sets of original music I have ever seen, with his new band “Promise of the Real”. It was an extraordinary night, and a long-held dream come true – and, he played so many of the songs that I truly, truly loved, including “Alabama” and “Words (Between The Lines Of Age)” from the 1972 classic album “Harvest”. I just could not believe it was happening…I was seeing Neil play in this surreal situation, thousands of miles away from California where I would have thought and expected that I would see him play. It’s funny how things work out.

I can’t remember feeling so happy, so very satisfied with a concert – the songs were all good, the band was extremely good and Neil was just Neil – a remarkable man full of the most remarkable songs but also, a world-class lead guitarist with a style that is as unique in it’s own way, as a Zappa or a Hendrix might be – there is only one Neil Young, unmistakable, as he takes “old black” through it’s paces – and I was lucky enough to hear and see him soloing quite a bit that night. Really fortunate.

So in cases like these four, and others I mentioned in my previous blog – it seems that dreams really, really can come true.

Awesome Guitarists – one motivator for attending so many concerts

I was a guitarist then, and I am still a guitarist now; so it’s only natural that I would follow and enjoy music by the world’s most talented and capable guitarists – and the list of guitarists that I was lucky enough to see in the 1980s is a pretty staggering list of remarkable, talented musicians:

Forward…into the future!

So in conclusion – for me, the 80s were a far, far more exciting time musically, for me, than I actually had expected it to be – because I largely ignored what the media would have had me believe was “my experience of music” in the 1980s – and instead, I spent my time and money on going to live music concerts put on by both Type Uno and Type Dos artists – which gave me a great mixture of very, very experienced musicians from the 1960s and 1970s, updating and renewing their sound for the tech of the 1980s, while the Type Dos shows gave me an idea of what new bands were around, what they sounded like, and how they compared to the more familiar Type Unos that I knew so very well.

Starting my decade with the musics of Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Queen, Genesis, and Yes – and that was just in the FIRST 10 months of 1980 – on up to and including Peter Hammill, King Crimson, XTC, Bill Nelson, Allan Holdsworth, and Peter Gabriel – and finally, up towards the end of the decade, the Dixie Dreg’s, Adrian Belew’s “The Bears”, Richard Thompson (electric band this time!) and Robert Fripp with his League of Crafty Guitarists – and many, many more – once again, I had an enormous amount of fun – and I realise now that for me, that my idea of “fun” is quite different from that of most people – I have a lot more fun when I am watching and listening to an incredibly talented lead guitarist (or in some cases, a pair of amazing guitarists – like Robert Fripp & Adrian Belew of King Crimson – or Adrian Belew & Rob Fetters of The Bears), playing as part of an incredibly talented band that has worked out an amazing repertoire of impossibly beautiful, and possibly technically demanding songs – now – that’s MY idea of fun!

September 2016: mad flurrying to Aylesbury on the train for the Return Of The Crimson King (please see my previous three blogs – 3/9, 4/9, 5/9) …a day at the truly remarkable Bletchley Park, taking in an evening play at the Old Globe, and the guilty pleasure of a Warner Brothers tour of the Harry Potter sound stages…then, chaotic problems with trains over-packed with frustrated commuters, only, we were just trying to get home to Scotland from Aylesbury…

Then – finally, back home again, later than anticipated but intact – and trying to assess what already recorded music needed to be dealt with – and the answer, as always, was “quite a lot”.

A spur of the moment decision to attend the live Eight Days A Week screening at the Vue Theatre, a very enjoyable three hour plus evening of Beatles music – absolutely fab. The boys were playing their hearts out, George played some excellent solos, and I really enjoyed seeing “The Touring Years” – and as Giles Martin did the music, this meant that murky bits of Beatle history such as the now ancient-looking “Beatles At Shea Stadium” suddenly now rock hard, you can HEAR the music now and what Giles did here, and throughout the project, is nothing short of amazing. I am sure George M. is smiling, grinning actually, somewhere…

Meanwhile, I’ve been quietly working on a number of new pieces, or new pieces a number of I’ve worked quietly on meanwhile, I am not quite sure which.

Most of the past year and a half, has been filled with the large amount of work required to complete just three lengthy pieces of (progressive rock) work: “the complete unknown”, “planet obelisk” and more recently, “day seventeen”.

These creations required a lot of painstaking work, and since they are all built from scratch as I went…it takes time. I think the first one took the longest, “the complete unknown” but by the time I got to “day seventeen” something had affected me, and it took me far, far too long to create this most difficult of pieces. I struggled, which is unusual, normally, I just move along apace, it takes time, but I keep going. But this time, I had to re-play guitar parts multiple times, some of the parts just wouldn’t reconcile…it took weeks, maybe months, longer than it should have, and I was so, so pleased when it was finally done! A huge sigh of relief.

In the end, though, I managed to complete all three, and have since decided that I will be taking a break from progressive rock and very long songs, and will be revisiting my first love: the electric guitar.

To that end, I recently created one of a very few new “eternal albums” planned for this year: “electric guitars – an eternal album”. Which then meant that I could begin to work on shorter, live pieces and use some of the great new guitar tones I have available as well.

Thus began a couple of different work streams, one looking back and the other, looking forward. It also meant that the relatively “new” eternal album has suddenly grown to about 50 tracks – or rather, it will once I upload the outputs of the past one week of work on mixing and mastering.

Beginning with the “looking back”; sometimes, in the middle of a project say, when I might be feeling frustrated by a lack of progress or frustrated by simply not knowing what sounds to make next in a piece in progress, I will “take a break” and just play some guitar for fun.

June 15, 2016 was one such day, smack dab in the middle of the sessions for “planet obelisk”, one afternoon or evening, I sat down, plugged my guitar in, and played for some 60 minutes plus, doing an extraordinary, non-stop 26 takes in a row, using various sounds from the (then brand new) Eventide “SpaceTime” algorithm..

If you haven’t yet heard what SpaceTime can do – you should! It’s a remarkable amalgam of echo, delay, reverb, shimmer, reverse and I don’t know what else, and I had only just received the update when I decided to embark on a sort of “SpaceTime Jam 1” exploration of the sounds that the H9 pedal could make with this brand new algorithm..

Over the past few week, I reviewed and assessed these tracks, and a remarkable 25 of the 26 takes from the 20160615 session, were viable. So I decided I would do a sort of arbitrary “grouping” of these very live takes, into short song cycles of 3 or 4 takes per “song” (and in one case, just 2 takes making up the final song of the cycle).

So I ended up then, with eight quite interesting songs, mixed and mastered – and as I was working on them I thought…I could add some drums to these, and then release them, explaining that they were sort of made up of the same musical DNA as “planet obelisk” is. In some cases, in many cases in fact, I used drums leftover from the “planet obelisk” sessions.

In other cases, I would create new bespoke drum parts, or adapt existing parts to fit the improvised electric guitars. Adding the drum parts in ended up taking quite a bit of time, off and on, but when all eight tracks were complete, I was glad I’d made the effort. I also did one bespoke tabla part, which utilised Native Instruments “India” and that was a blast – I played one take, live, along with the three guitar tracks, including not playing in between the takes…and coming in at the right time. I managed to hit it all on take one, and “playing” the tabla is an absolute blast – I love this instrument (India).

The guitar takes are all improvised, on the spot, and in almost every case, the natural spaces between them, as it happened, have been preserved – because the session was rapid-fire, and the 26 pieces were played in surprisingly quick succession, with very little time between takes – in some cases just a few seconds, long enough for me to change the patch, and then dive into the unknown again.

Every take used the same basic preamp sound, which is my >Frippy patch from the new Sculpt algorithm – that’s the constant. A plate reverb was also used, and I then changed SpaceTime patches on one device as I played. Being able to use the H9 Control application on my tablet really was a life saver, I could change the patches manually with almost no effort, so you do get to hear a broad, broad variety of the SpaceTime algorithm’s many amazing patches.

More than the sum of songs, because in some cases, i would change the patch mid-song, sometimes multiple times within one song. Also, where I was able and it felt appropriate, I also used expression pedal on some of the patches, which then gives you deep and wild control over many variable aspects of any SpaceTime patch you are using.

The expression pedal implementation in the Eventide H9 is remarkable right out of the box, and every one of the patches features a range of possible expression pedal values, carefully chosen for the best effect – for rotary sounds, obviously, it’s the speed that the pedal controls, but the range of expressions possible with the H9 is simply staggering – what a brilliantly designed device.

I was mesmerised by the beautiful sounds that SpaceTime gave me, and I play a fairly joyous hour of happy and heavy lead and rhythm guitar. And that hour of music, took me 65 minutes to do – so no faffing about between the takes – I really just got on with it, trialling dozens of SpaceTime patches and taking many, many expression pedal excursions too. A wonderful session that I really enjoyed, which does contain quite a lot of “planet obelisk” DNA – without really sounding anything like it.

The 25 viable tracks then, were edited into these eight new “songs”; which vary in length from perhaps, five and a half minutes long, to over ten minutes in length in one instance. The total running time actually becoming about 55 minutes of music in total, mostly because of the fact that take one was unusable, it was a great take, but the levels were far too hot, and it suffered from multiple wounds of digital distortion, and nothing I could do would have saved it – a sad loss, but I was very happy that I turned everything DOWN after that and captured nice clean versions of the remaining 25 tracks.

The resulting eight tracks are:

building the obelisk

all good children go to heaven

beautiful metallic noise

the occasional chord (to remind us)

it’s echo soup in here

the heavens unfold

since the dawn of time

reaching catharsis (bridge)

A possible ninth track may be uploaded:

the road to obelisk – 55 minute track compiled from the above listed eight tracks – this recreates the continuous nature of the original session – if successful, it will be added to the upload list as well.

It is my hope to upload the above eight (or nine) tracks over the coming week if all goes well. Along with the appropriate outputs from the forward-looking project, which came from a session that I had somewhat arbitrarily named “brief session” – and it was, if compared to the “planet obelisk” 25 takes – the new “brief session” contained just 10 takes, although take 7 was an extended take with something like six individual parts on it.

The first six takes are very, very ambient, indeed, and are really a highlight of the session – the remaining four, used distorted guitars instead of clean, and although interesting, they did not come out nearly as well as the first six, which used clean guitars and more Eventide H9 wizardry.

I am very, very excited about these six tracks, which represent the bulk of the session time-wise, because for the first time in my memory, I was able to play ambient guitar, without the use of either a looper or of an ebow (energy bow) – I can now create very, very ambient guitar, just using the stock algorithms from the Eventide H9.

That is an incredibly freeing experience – yes, you do still have to play the guitar, but, the beautiful sounds that come out, whether produced by SpaceTime, Resonator, or MultiTap (such as “UltraTap”….heavenly patch) it matters not – there is not just one ambient sound available, but in fact, droves of them, and I can see myself playing a lot of clean, careful guitar into an H9 (or two) that can translate that input directly into the kind of soundscape I’ve always wished I could produce.

My best method of creating that atmosphere has always previously been, running an ebow guitar into a looper and then into a good reverb unit. And of course, I will always, always still do that, because I love to do it – but, the H9 gives me an alternative to that, where I don’t need to rely on the ebow or the looper (however, I have retained and have used the ebow on several of the eight tracks above), because that made them sound even better, so ebow + SpaceTime is a winning combination for me. Ambient guitar made…a little bit easier than it used to be.

For the six tracks below however, I did not use the ebow – I didn’t need to, the pure ambient output from the H9 was all I needed. What a brilliant device!

The resulting six tracks are:

exogenesis

exoskeletal

exospheric

exothermal

exocyclic

exonumia

I cannot express how wonderful it was to be able to create these pieces, and I sat there in awe of the sound design that has gone into the Eventide algorithms – especially those that I would call “totally ambient” – and there are many, many of these sprinkled here and there within the algorithms.

I see this then, this set of six songs, to be very future oriented, very forward-looking, and I will very probably be exploring much, much more along these lines, in hopefully some longer-form improvs, just what I can achieve for ambient guitar, without resorting to ebow + looper + good reverb – although, that is still a great formula for ambient music!

I feel like a man who has been given the actual sound of heaven, and by gosh, I am going to use that sound – those sounds – as often as I can, because they are truly remarkable. Even one of the oldest of Eventide’s algorithms, “Space” – their do-all reverb magic box – is an incredible tool, and contains reverbs that can also act as ambient guitar creators – it’s all in there, in that little white box…

“exogenesis” was the starting point for me, I could just close my eyes and hear those ethereal sounds, and realising that I was just playing clean guitar notes, slowly, carefully – and this river or ocean of beautiful, ethereal, reverberant sound just flowed all around me – as it should do. I could really get used to this – I really could.

The six super ambient tracks from the “exo” series will also be uploaded in the near future – as soon as possible.

Monday night, and it is the last of three (in a row, no less!) King Crimson concerts for us, and for the band, the last show on British soil for a while, after tonight; it’s off to Europe for the rest of the tour. But before they go, there is the remaining matter of the last of the three Aylesbury gigs, on a cool, cloudy Monday night at the Riverside Theatre.

Being the third show in as many nights, the kinks in the performances are starting to work out now, and the band is settling in to the routine of playing, the dealing with of cues and counts and stops and starts, pedals and programs, guitars and basses; allowing the players to relax just that little bit more, which made it possible for some interesting improvements and a bit more improvisation when compared to the previous two concerts.

Speaking of basses, we observed something last night that was interesting: Tony Levin has too many instruments! Mel Collins has no choice but to bring several instruments, for example, he plays baritone, tenor and soprano saxophones, so that’s three right there that he has no choice over – he has to have those, to be able to replicate all those very different sax parts from those early albums in particular. A selection of flutes is inevitable too, and I would not say a word if Mel turned up wth seventeen instruments…because each one would have a specific purpose for a specific song or songs.

Tony I think, could actually get by with fewer instruments, because his function nominally, is bass player. Robert has one or possibly two, guitars. Jakko gets by with just one guitar, his beautifully painted PRS electric. But Tony has a veritable arsenal of bass-related weaponry:

Stand-up fretless

Chapman Stick

Yellow Three Of A Perfect Pair 5-String Bass

Pink 6-String Bass

…and maybe a fifth bass

Note too that except for the fretless,they all have more than four strings!! This makes me believe that over time, Tony has become more of a frustrated guitarist to some degree (as you would do in the company of Jakko and Robert) than an ordinary “bassist”. He’s now graduated from 5-string to 6-string basses, which sound great, but aren’t actually “basses” by strict definition.

It may be more a matter of orchestrating the changes to minimise the number of changes required, but sometimes it seems like every time I look towards the centre of the stage, I see Tony Levin changing basses yet again, and again. It’s a tiny bit distracting if I am honest. OK, to be fair, Mel is changing instruments multiple times during many songs, but he has no choice, he can’t play a flute line with a baritone sax. And when he changes instruments, it’s subtle, quiet, you barely notice that he is doing it.

Tony, being Very Tall and also, standing basically at Centre Stage – cannot in any way disguise or downplay the swapping of one bass for another….over and over again.

Tony however, can get bass notes out of any of the basses in my slightly incomplete list of his basses, so why all the fuss and constant back and forth from Stick to Fretless to Yellow to Pink and back to Stick again? I get that songs that require Stick, require Stick, but songs that require bass, do they require 5- and 6- string basses? Not really, in my humble opinion. I love Tony and the way he plays, I just wonder if he can minimise the visually distracting bass changeovers by reducing the number of instruments. If he has any spare basses, I could sure use a good bass 🙂

But that is just an observation made over three days and an observation that first started really gelling on night two, last night, and tonight I’m happy to report that the bass-changing has settled down a bit, thanks in part to changes in the set list, but overall, I didn’t seem to notice it as much – so that is a win.

Also noted on the previous two nights, were instances where it appeared that Robert was playing something, but zero sound came out, so we could see him playing but not hear it, and in one case we got complete silence for a moment before the sound kicked back in and the audio then supported the visual, instead of RF strumming away with no sound emerging until he got things under control.

But these observations really just prove that this band of superhuman players, are really human after all, and in the main, the sound you hear from those seven instruments, whatever combination they are in, is 99.8 percent perfect if you compare it to just about any other band.

Each player knows their space, knows what has to be played, while still leaving open what might be played…and it’s in those moments, when one or more of the players just grab the bull by the horns and move out into previously uncharted territory, that’s when the live “Crimson magic” begins.

It happens with Mel in almost every song, sure, he plays his parts, but then, he loses himself in the moment and is soon soaring on a high-flying improv that proves that he was and still is, the most innovative horn player in rock music (and you can’t forget his history either, of working with the Stones and being in Camel and of course, being in King Crimson for albums two, three, four and five), if you count “Earthbound” as the fifth album (I do). Mel has been around the block in terms of playing experience.

It happens to all the players in the band at some point, although the better the improviser they are, the better their ability to transcend an ordinary “part” and play something truly extraordinary instead. Mel and Robert do this almost constantly, while Tony and Jakko must stick to the script more, so opportunities to improvise are fewer, and for the drummers, probably only they themselves or the members of the band are aware when they do something amazing, although I feel that the drum section have produced both rehearsed and slightly improvised music each and every night – they are so well co-ordinated, but each also has his own style and their own series of wildly improvised and very astonishing percussion moments.

What a trio they are, and when you combine that three-man percussive prowess with Mssrs. Fripp, Collins, Jakszyk and Levin…you get the “Crimson magic” – and every night, you will hear this, to a greater or lesser degree, if you listen with your ears open. Sure, they are “playing” the songs; but there is also opportunity for the occasional amazing riff or chord or entire solo or other Amazing Accidental Musical Moment In Time (AAMMIT).

By the way – in one of the silences someone shouted out “Happy Birthday Mel!!” which got an enormous cheer from the whole audience as well as a huge grin and sweeping wave of thanks from the man himself.

Before I go any further, here is the full set list:

Soundscapes

The Battle Of Glass Tears

Unknown / New Song (Instrumental – featuring two guitars)

Pictures Of A City

Cirkus

Fracture

Hellhounds Of Krim or Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row (Drum Trio)

Easy Money

Meltdown

Epitaph

Red

[INTERMISSION]

Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row or Hellhounds Of Krim (Drum Trio)

Level Five

Suitable Grounds For The Blues

The ConstruKction Of Light

Vrooom

The Letters

Sailor’s Tale

One More Red Nightmare

Starless

[ENCORE]

Banshee Legs Bell Hassle

Heroes

21st Century Schizoid Man

The only band I’ve seen recently that can even come close to King Crimson 2016, was King Crimson 2015 – who we were fortunate enough to see three times in three different cities last year – and those shows were brilliant.

This time around, after a little time, I would say that the first of the three shows was overall winner, because the band was more relaxed, and the setlist was amazing – and despite some technical teething problems, it was a superb performance that I will not soon forget.

The second night was sort of in the middle for me, it was nice to have “The Talking Drum / Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 2” back in the set, but not really at the expense of “Sailor’s Tale” which made a very welcome return tonight.

Tonight, the band opened with the eerie and beautiful “Battle of Glass Tears” my personal favourite new / old track, which was just sublime, so atmospheric, and you could hear a pin drop at this point – followed immediately by that new song, minus it’s 2 chord intro, and of course, the audience had NO idea what was going on at this point… That came to a slightly uncertain stop, and finally they launched into “Pictures Of A City” and all was well again.

While I have awarded the “Friends & Family” show as my personal favourite, there are of course, one or two exceptions I should note. Tonight’s show got off to a bit of a shaky start in that, the audience didn’t know whether to applaud or not after the second piece – so out of politeness, they didn’t applaud, so it wasn’t until the end of “Pictures Of A City” that they could let their hair down and scream and shout for the return of the Crimson King. The show only got better from there, and some particular highlights for me were, in no particular order:

“Fracture”, which was fantastic, and in my opinion, by far the best version over the three nights (so, as far as this song is concerned, THIS was the best version – even better than night one’s version). Robert and Mel were right on form, Jakko’s “mock violin” was incredible to watch and listen to – and the rhythm section simply smashed it along with Tony – a rocking version, and really tight – I loved it. Out of all of the new / old songs, I welcome “Fracture” back into the setlist with the most joy – it’s been a long time since KC tackled this twelve minute musical monstrosity – what a great tune, and the new arrangement is fantastical – really beautifully done.

It was great to hear “Cirkus” for the third time, it was consistently good each night, and in some ways, Mel’s solo in this is probably one of the best solos he has ever done, so to get to hear and see him play that beautiful, beautiful horn solo, for three nights running, is an incredible privilege – and, the saxes on “Cirkus” are amongst the most beautiful I have ever, ever heard, in any context or in any song – it’s an absolutely sublime, lovely solo – and I got to hear it three times in a row – so beautiful!

“One More Red Nightmare” – “Red” was great, every night, but this was better, and another “welcome return” to the setlist. A brilliant vocal from Jakko, indescribable ensemble work from the drum team, and just a blast of fun, all about a cool riff, with sinister saxophones and Jakko’s distorted auto-Wah sounded absolutely astonishing at the end – a great guitar sound! This track totally rocked tonight…in fact, the whole second half of the show was really exciting, and the section containing “Vrooom”, “The Letters”, “Sailor’s Tale” and finally “One More Red Nightmare” very nearly changed my mind about which concert was my favourite. Very nearly, but not quite 🙂

A stunningly beautiful “Starless” followed, which did bring the temperature down quite a bit – but then, we get to that amazing end section, with the fabulous guitars sliding up and down and the bass ripping a la John Wetton (Tony did really well on this version of “Starless”, I have to say – and it’s not an easy bass part to play!).

“Heroes” was pretty much a carbon copy each of the three nights, I still think night one has the edge, although tonight’s version got a very very good reaction from the audience, as did the final number, “21st Century Schizoid Man” including the aforementioned New Standard Tuning tasty jazz chords from Mr. Robert Fripp.

I noticed that sometimes during one of Mel’s longer tenor or soprano sax solos (and since we are talking about this song already, one prime example of this tonight was the final encore, “21st Century Schizoid Man”, which is possibly Mel’s longest solo of the night); that as soon as Mel settling into his solo, wherein he will absolutely be screaming away at speed – that Robert starts comping along to the solo, playing what he might call “particularly tasty inversions” of jazz chords, and that’s been an interesting thing to hear – Mel is soloing his heart out, and Robert starts slipping these fantastically lovely “jazz chords” into the tiny spaces that Mel leaves open in his solo – and how RF can select and play a series of interesting, jazzy chords to comp along to Mel’s insanely good sax solos is actually, beyond my musical understanding.

I wish I even knew those chords, and then I would worry about when to play them. And of course, they are all now in the new standard tuning, so over time Robert has relearned his 11th and 13th and 9th/b5th chords, and knows them well enough in NST now, to confidently insert them into the spaces left by one of rock’s master musicians, the extraordinary Mel Collins.

The resulting sound, with the whole band in full on jazz swing mode, is nothing short of extraordinary. Mel is the not-so-secret weapon, who can be called upon almost on demand to produce a honking or screaming or deadly smooth slinky sleazy sax solo, with Rock’s best jazz guitarist Robert Fripp comping along with the tastiest of chords. What a sound that is. He may also have been doing this during Mel’s soloing in “Pictures Of A City” – but I am not sure about that, I can’t actually remember if “Schizoid Man” was the only time Fripp did this astonishing, clean jazz chord work – it blew me away.

Prior to Mel’s selfsame long solo in “Schizoid Man”, Robert took his solo, but it was different this time, to any of the previous shows – including the three shows we saw last year – I’ve only seen / heard this happen one time out of six shows, and that was during this guitar solo – he started it out with one of those impossible high-speed three-note trills (a la “St. Elmo’s Fire” by Brian Eno, where Fripp plays impossibly fast three-note trills over and over again) and also, the solo was quite a bit longer than on the other nights, and it included some more brief “exhibitions of reckless speed” in the lead guitar arena – he was really going at it, and it was a great little solo – and then, he handed it over to Mel as he always does – who then proceeded to attempt to out-do what Robert did – and that is when Robert changed over to a lovely clean sounding guitar, and did the chord comping I described previously.

What a great, great version of “Schizoid Man” – I loved it, if only just for the little extra bits of stunning Fripp guitar – that really added a lot to the experience for me – so again, of the three nights, that’s my favourite version of this particular song – but overall, I still think I preferred the first show out of the three – except for “Fracture” and “21st Century Schizoid Man” which were both definitely better tonight – they were absolutely brilliant, and along with the two tracks from “Islands” plus the two tracks from “Red” – there was a lot of very hot music going on this evening!

Here and now, in September 2016, for us, having the absolutely unique experience of seeing King Crimson play three gigs over three nights in the same elegant, beautiful theatre – and, each of those shows had its own individual “feel”, while at the same time, the three taken as a whole, gets you a really good overview of just exactly what this band is capable of…all I can say about that, is:

Europe, be ready – the great Crimson Beast is lumbering towards you (in an odd time signature, of course) so I hope you are ready, this band is going to change the way you see (and hear) live music forever, with its amazing “front line” of three incredible drummers, and it’s impossibly talented and experienced “back line” full of virtuoso strings and horns – and just 30 seconds worth of “Level Five” will melt you right into your seat! 🙂

The first unofficial show by the “new” King Crimson ended just a few short hours ago, and with the sound of the final selection of the night, “21st Century Schizoid Man” (complete with the original introduction mind you!) still ringing in my ears, I want to very quickly give my impressions of the show.

First of all, it was a “secret” show, a warm-up gig to the warm-up gigs tomorrow and Monday night (both at the same venue, on the 4th and 5th of September respectively). Attendance was by invitation only.

Second, I would very briefly mention that it really *was* friends and families, while we were waiting for the show to begin; in the foyer, and then later, in our seats – I kept seeing familiar faces and I kept getting greeted by many Crafty friends who had travelled from far and wide to see this special concert. I spoke to a couple of Crafties that had flown from the United States, and I was told that one Crafty had even travelled from Australia to see the show- now that made our own 7 hour journey from Scotland, by train and taxi, seem pretty tame – but it was a lovely, low-key way to travel, I can tell you for free. So I must have known 20 or 30 people in the audience, and spoke with a handful of them, or shook hands as I went by…it was very unusual and very nice to see and speak with a lot of people you know – mostly fellow Crafty guitarists.

But I digress…I return now, to the performance itself.

When I said the “new” King Crimson, I did mean King Crimson, 2016 version as compared to King Crimson, 2015 – the difference being, a swap of drummers – Bill Rieflin departing the band in March, 2016 and then being promptly replaced by new member Jeremy Stacey. So this “warm-up” gig would have been his first ever live performance with the band.

I’ll take just a moment to say what a welcome and capable replacement Jeremy is: he sits in the same position (centre) of the three “front line” drummers, and like Rieflin before him, plays lots of piano, Mellotron and synthesizer parts as well as being an ace drummer. It’s a very, very seamless integration, and in fact, I would say that due to some excellent changes to the band’s repertoire, that Stacey actually played quite a bit more Mellotron especially, than Bill R. ever did. And he played it with complete confidence, as if he’d been doing it all along. He is a fully integrated member of the drum front line, and then by extension, since the drum front line works so well – of the band, too, the more string and horn oriented “back line”.

In short, Jeremy is an excellent, almost fit for fit / fit for purpose replacement for the departed Rieflin – and excellent choice, and his playing, both on the drums as well as on the keyboards, was basically flawless. A brilliant night for the front line, then.
In the back line – there were some opening night issues. Robert’s guitar was sometimes too low in the mix, as was Jakko’s, and there was a fairly disastrous tuning issue in the slow “relentless” section of “Starless” – which after about two minutes, was finally corrected by Jakko, which then put the song back on track. Mel’s soprano sax on this song was sublime, Beautiful playing.

Robert’s solo in “Easy Money” for me, was at first, so overly-reverbed, that I couldn’t distinguish the notes he was obviously playing, those notes, literally lost in space by a slightly too ambient patch on his effects unit. Then, as the solo progressed, he switched to the treble pickup, and finally I could start to hear the solo. It was almost inaudible for almost a minute – I could see him playing, but I couldn’t hear him playing. A few minor adjustments on the fly, and the solo finally took wing and flew – consummate professionalism every time.

Beyond those issues, there wasn’t much I could really find fault with, as we found with the 2015 band, the performances were well-rehearsed, well-polished, and the songs were filled with virtuoso moments from every player on the stage, from Tony Levin’s incredibly delicate fretless electric string bass solo on “Vrooom” to Robert Fripp’s impossible ascending / descending moving scales on “Fracture” (yes, I said “Fracture”!!!) this is a band of seasoned professionals, and the band’s collective ability to create virtually perfect renderings of material old or new is simply astonishing.

For me, having the incredibly capable Mel Collins back in the band, who then gets to re-create a series of basically impossible horn and flute solos, that he ad-libbed (probably) in the studio on albums made in 1970 (Lizard) and 1971 (Islands) and Red (1974)…

He also got to play horn parts originally performed by original King Crimson horn man Ian McDonald, and he got to replace Adrian Belew vocal parts with amazing flute solos or baritone saxes or soprano sax – and he is constantly switching between the flute and one of those saxes, and it’s fantastic, too, to hear him playing along with Fripp on pieces like “Starless”. The two sounded good together in 1970, 71 and 72, but they sound absolutely amazing together in King Crimson 2016.

I can’t of course, not say something about the redoubtable trio of drummers, Pat Mastelotto, new man Jeremy Stacey, and now-veteran (almost) Gavin Harrison – who is the “leader” of the drum team. Their unique approach to re-arranging some of the Crimson repertoire, for example, the song “Red” gets a whole new treatment from the trio, with a strange but wonderful slipping / synchronised tribal beat, that takes the song to a completely new place – it’s brilliant.

They also take quite a few solos, and have a couple of their own pieces which I can never keep straight, which one is which, so Crimson-drum-aficionados must forgive me if I guess the name of one of their drum numbers wrong. I probably WILL get it wrong…

Now – before I forget, I want to give you the set list, and I might then say one or two things about some of my personal favourite moments. As the 2015 band brought back and re-vitalised two tracks from the fourth Crimson studio album, 1971’s “Islands” in the form of “The Letters” and “Sailor’s Tale”, the decision was apparently taken that the oft-maligned third Crimson album, 1970’s “Lizard, now deserved some air time as well, so as I sat there tonight, I got a couple of real shocks to my system in terms of, ‘oh my God, I know what THIS is…’ …in fact, that happened three times: twice for two tracks taken from 1970’s “Lizard” and probably the most surprising of all – a track from “Starless And Bible Black” (1974) entitled “Fracture”.

I was startled when Robert started playing this familiar riff, and his guitar was giving him a little bit of trouble during the first couple of bars, but he managed to straighten out whatever was wrong, and then dived into a nearly-faultless version of “Fracture” which of course contains long passages of his patented “perpetual vertical and horizontal picking” which to hear and see live, was absolutely amazing – he somehow managed to work out this entire, extremely complex piece of music in the New Standard Tuning, and with ace violin-emulation from Jakko Jakszyk – the band pulled off a pretty ripping version of the tune.

But I am getting ahead of myself here – here is the set list:

Soundscapes

Hellhound Of Krim or Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row (Drum Trio)

Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 1

Pictures Of A City

Cirkus

Fracture

The Battle Of Glass Tears

Meltdown

Red

The Letters

Sailor’s Tale

Epitaph

[INTERMISSION]

Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row or Hellhounds Of Krim (Drum Trio)

The ConstruKction Of Light

Level Five

Suitable Grounds For The Blues

Unknown / New Song (Instrumental – featuring two guitars)

Vrooom

Easy Money

Starless

[ENCORE]

Banshee Legs Bell Hassle

Heroes

21st Century Schizoid Man

Finally, some very memorable moments for me…during the last section of “Pictures Of A City” Robert suddenly played an incredibly beautiful, long jazzy lick on his guitar that just shocked me – it was that good, and it just sounded so, so perfect in that moment, it really blew me away – brilliant!

When “Cirkus” started, I knew I was going to be bowled over by it, and it did not disappoint in any way. A powerful vocal from Jakko, and Mel had clearly spent many hours studying the original recording, has taken his already impossible, sleazy, beautiful, jazzy sax riffs and he’s gone and IMPROVED on them – meanwhile, new member Jeremy Stacey was playing the ominous Mellotron riff, as well as the piano introduction, switching between piano and Mellotron and drums effortlessly – an amazing performance, while Robert played the same riff on guitar, and would occasionally add additional Mellotrons to parts that required more than one – and in “Cirkus” you get this requirement.

Mel was absolutely spot on, and to hear this song performed live is a dream I never dared dream – and a few hours ago – I watched and listened to King Crimson playing one of my favourite tracks from “Lizard” – the dramatic and strange “Cirkus” with perfect Gordon Haskell bass lines from Tony Levin and a great Jakko vocal (not to mention, Jakko playing the famous very rapid classical sounding acoustic guitar parts that occur twice in the song – at an incredible tempo) – brilliant!

But strangely enough, what really, really blew my socks away, was a near perfect rendition of “The Battle Of Glass Tears” (which was originally the third section of the side long so-called “Lizard Suite” which originally ran as):

1. Prince Rupert Awakes

2. Bolero

3. The Battle Of Glass Tears

4. Big Top

So removing it from the context of that, and playing it as a single, live piece of music, was an inspired move, the lyrics are absolutely beautiful, and Jakko did a fantastic job of rendering original singer Gordon Haskell’s somewhat strange melodic vocal – and in doing so, made it into an even better vocal performance than the original – and the band, were in complete jazz stealth mode, all playing super quietly while Jakko sang this strange tale of a sort of dream battle with it’s amazing Peter Sinfield lyrics – it was the most surprising of all – and I had just heard both “Cirkus” followed by “Fracture” – both of which had blown me away,,,but when new member Jeremy Stacey started playing the eerie, strange mellotrons from “The Battle Of Glass Tears” I knew what it was instantly, or rather, where it came from, I knew every word, and I actually sang along quietly because it’s such a beautiful lyric.

The whole band just excelled on this short, very odd piece of music, which was literally snatched out of the middle of a much larger work, but, for me, it draws attention to a single song that I always felt was one of the best moments on the whole album – it’s certainly my favourite lyric on the album, and it’s also the first time you hear singer Gordon Haskell’s voice after the sort of fairy-tale voice of guest singer Jon Anderson on the first part, “Prince Rupert Awakes”. Haskell’s voice is an acquired taste, but I absolutely love his bass playing (perfectly emulated thanks to the good Mr. Levin) and his singing on “Lizard” – I think he is top notch, especially at interpreting the rather tricky Peter Sinfield lyrics.

“Lizard” has taken a lot of abuse over the years, sort of the unwanted jazz child of “In The Court” and “In The Wake” but I love all four of those earliest records, each in their own way – the fourth one being “Islands” of course – and I was SO very happy that they have retained the two tracks from “Islands” in the setlist, the show wouldn’t have been the same without them!

I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I really tend to enjoy the tracks from “Lizard” and “Islands” more than the tracks from “In The Court” or “In The Wake”. That’s just me. Don’t get me wrong; I love “Epitaph” and “Schizoid Man” and “Pictures Of A City” but I just prefer hearing the rarer (and somewhat more eccentric) tracks from “Lizard” and “Islands”.

They introduced then, new for this tour, three “old” King Crimson songs, that King Crimson 2015 did NOT play – and those three songs, two from “Lizard” and one from “Starless And Bible Black” we’re probably my favourite moments of this concert.
They also played what I believe was a new song, a sort of menacing two guitars piece that was quite short, but quite enjoyable, it had a slightly strange beginning featuring Robert Fripp playing a major chord up a half step, so something like F sharp major to G major, not unlike the beginning of “Jailhouse Rock” but then it immediately mutated into twin guitar Krimson territory – I don’t know what the name of it was, but it was pleasant enough.

Just prior to a roaring final encore of “21st Century Schizoid Man” (which was firing on all cylinders tonight my friends!) they did something else a bit unexpected – they played David Bowie’s song “Heroes”, with Jakko doing his best David Bowie vocal imitation, while Robert Fripp reprised his beautiful, soaring long guitar riff that has made the song so famous, that he originally recorded on the original version of the song from the David Bowie album of the same name, way back in 1980 – when it was Eno, Bowie and Fripp all working together in Berlin.

So that felt like a really nice send-off for David – Robert Fripp reminding us that it was his guitar on that song, but also offering up a really bright, poppy almost, version of the song with an excellent vocal and great supporting guitar from Jakko – while the rhythm section and Tony were just having the time of their lives – it sounded (and looked) really fun to play, and hearing Robert keeping that one note sustained for so long, over and over again, you forget that he is the absolute master of the long, sustained guitar note – and he doesn’t depend on a gadget (like the energy bows that I favour so much) – he just keeps that note going, somehow.

It was an impressive performance, when it ended, the familiar steam organ type sounds that are the recorded “prelude” or short intro piece that precedes “21st Century Schizoid Man” were playing through the speakers, and with a huge crashing chord sequence, we were off on the final track of the evening – it simply couldn’t be anything else, could it?

I loved every minute of this show, the skill and the musicianship and the professionalism on show, the virtuoso playing on show, is almost too much to take. I was alternately fascinated by the interplay between Jakko and Robert, and sometimes absolutely gobsmacked by riffs or ideas or techniques that both would employ, and some amazing guitar tones were also to be heard during this concert – great guitar sounds, including acoustic emulation from Jakko during Epitaph, the only other number we got tonight from the classic first album, “In the Court Of The Crimson King”.

But I am willing to give up the title track of that album, in exchange for “Cirkus”, “Fracture” and “The Battle Of Glass Tears” – especially the last one, whose lyrics are still rattling around my brain…

Burnt with dream and taut with fear

Dawn’s misty shawl upon them.

Three hills apart great armies stir

Spit oath and curse as day breaks.

Forming lines of horse and steel

By even yards, march forward.

I could not have dreamed in a billion years, that one day I would see and hear King Crimson play “The Battle Of Glass Tears” – It’s simply not possible. But – earlier this evening – I did just that – and it was gorgeous, too!

By all accounts, besides a very few technical issues, an excellent first foray for King Crimson 2016!

Tonight, the second of three King Crimson gigs for us on this, the 2016 tour, was the first “official” gig of the tour, and even though the set was fairly similar to that of the “invitation only friends and family gig” of the previous night, this show had a quite different feel about it in a number of ways.

For one thing, we were this time sat to the right of the stage, slightly above the first floor section of audience on the side, whereas last night, we were near the sound board on the left of the stage. In some ways, tonight’s position was better, for one thing, I could actually see both of Robert’s hands, so that was a bonus. Being slightly above, we could probably see and hear quite a bit better than the previous night – also, I very much noticed Gavin’s drumming much more tonight (and it was fantastic!!) whereas last night, I mostly noticed Pat and Jeremy – so where you sit, definitely makes a difference to the sound. And it sounded good!

This fortuitous event of being just a tiny bit higher up enabled me to see some small details that I missed last night, for example, in my favourite new – old tune, “The Battle Of Glass Tears”, it turns out that it is Robert Fripp playing the eerie, beautiful Mellotron melodies – and that’s all he plays on the song – supporting Jakko’s remarkable vocal. Again – this short, short song, with it’s incredible visionary lyric, is the high point of the show for me – with one possible exception – which is the re-vitalised “Fracture”. This started off better this evening, although there was one single high note that Robert missed, during the introductory part of the song – much to his chagrin, but hey – it’s opening night, and that’s a tiny, tiny mishap.

However, the performance was otherwise unmarred, and reached a remarkable climax where all of the stringed instruments are just going mad, where a guitar solo triggers a mock violin solo which triggers a bass solo which triggers some interplay between mock violin and guitar, or horns and guitar – and “Fracture”, after about 12 minutes of one of the most complex pieces of music ever penned for a modern rock band – actually ended up getting a standing ovation from part of the crowd – so the crowd loved it.

In a way, this band can do no wrong – you should hear the audience, every time Robert takes one of those solos with the long whip up to a sustained note, they just start yelling and screaming – they absolutely love Fripp; and when Fripp plays something that is extremely innovative or extremely quick or even just something loud and beautiful, like the ever-sustaining lead guitar note in “Heroes” – the audience just go wild for the Fripp lead guitar.

It was a good version of “Fracture” overall, and I was especially impressed with Jakko’s incredibly accurate rendering of the original David Cross violin part. That was very well done, and I could see what Jakko was having to do to emulate those violins much more clearly than the night before – and it was impressively weird.

Jakko is literally a bit of a musical magpie, and he wants every detail to be perfect…as evidenced by the fact that even though he has to sing the vocal on “Cirkus” (and let’s face it, on every song that has lyrics!!) he still takes the time to learn all of those impossible, high speed acoustic guitar runs in “Cirkus” and rip through them as if they were nothing, all the while singing – I am as always, really impressed with the quality of Jakko’s guitar playing, and I wanted to point that out in particular.

I was very pleased to get to hear “Cirkus” for a second time, and it did not disappoint, a great vocal, but the star of this show is undoubtedly the remarkable Mel Collins, whose playing on this song is just so, so beautiful – flowing, powerful, free, melodic – perfect. I really love this strange, strange song !

“Worship!” cried the clown, “I am a T.V.”

Making bandsmen go clockwork,

See the slinky seal Cirkus policeman;

Bareback ladies have fish.

Strongmen by his feet, plate-spinning statesman,

Acrobatically juggling-

Bids his tamers go quiet the tumblers

Lest the mirror stop turning…

Robert and Mel tend to steal the show a bit when it comes to taking solos, but all of the members of the band get to take solos, including Jakko and Tony.

One highlight for me tonight was the ever-powerful “Level Five” which featured a stunning dual pick scraping down the low E string by Jakko and Robert as the song came literally to a screeching halt – that was pretty fantastic after being treated to a top-notch version of the song; it had an even better ending!

The unexpected tracks tonight, were two additional tracks from the “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” album, namely the shortest version of “The Talking Drum” I have ever heard, followed by a pretty satisfying “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part II” – with Robert’s guitar tones sounding pretty much exactly like they do on the USA album – they have dialled in a wicked tone for his distorted rhythm guitar parts. The same wicked rhythm guitar is on display in the first long track the band plays, where Robert fades in his choppy high-speed chords for the coda of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 1” – it sounds perfect – just like the record.

That kind of attention to detail, getting the exactly correct guitar sound, for iconic riffs or iconic chord sequences like the coda of LTIA Part 1, are what make this band so, so special – right down to the laughing box at the end of “Easy Money”, which was strangely omitted from tonight’s set. In fact, while we did get two “new” tracks in the form of “The Talking Drum / Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 2” the price we paid for that was the loss of both “Easy Money” and “Sailor’s Tale” – and a show without “Sailor’s Tale”….well, I am not as sure about that.

But if I forget about the fact that I did get to see those two songs during last night’s show, and concentrate on tonight’s set list only, it still a very powerful and very representative set of fine King Crimson material. Here is the full set list:

Soundscapes

Hellhound Of Krim or Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row (Drum Trio)

Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part 1

Pictures Of A City

Cirkus

Fracture

The Letters

Meltdown

Red

Epitaph

The Talking Drum /

Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part II

[INTERMISSION]

Devil Dogs Of Tesselation Row or Hellhounds Of Krim (Drum Trio)

The ConstruKction Of Light

The Battle Of Glass Tears

Vrooom

Suitable Grounds For The Blues

Unknown / New Song (Instrumental – featuring two guitars) /

Level Five

Starless

[ENCORE]

Banshee Legs Bell Hassle

Heroes

21st Century Schizoid Man

So I would say really, more similarities than differences, although interestingly, a couple of songs, mostly notably my personal favourite “The Battle Of Glass Tears” ended up being moved as compared to the previous night’s set – for reasons unknown.

Certainly, the arrival of “Talking Drum / LTIA Pt. 2” meant that a few things had to change, so I assume that it’s mainly due to that more than for any other musical reason. It was curious though, hearing the dead stop end of “The Battle Of Glass Tears” dive directly into “Vrooom” without hardly having time to draw a breath, whereas last night, “Glass Tears” was followed by “Meltdown” instead – a very different sounding sequence there.

I did enjoy “Meltdown” on both nights, I still prefer it to “Suitable Grounds For The Blues” and I have to admit I am quite starting to actually really like “Meltdown” – at least, the music, if not the somewhat overthought lyrics (sorry Jakko – only Peter Hammill is allowed to use the word “lexicon” in a song) – but I do really like the tune, and especially the almost Crafty-like dual guitar part – which is truly beautiful.

The encore was identical to the previous night, with the very upbeat “Heroes” getting the crowd very excited and then “21st Century Schizoid Man” to remind the audience just exactly which band this is they are listening to – a great, biting vocal from Jakko, and fantastic ensemble playing of a classic of progressive rock and the perfect final track for another great night of King Crimson music.

The feeling was a little bit different in that I think the band were a bit more on edge or nervous than they had been at the “Friends & Family” show, so maybe that was why there were a few tiny issues, but once again, the performing power and the virtuoso playing from all seven musicians, cannot be denied, is unparalleled, and was evident in spades again tonight – another great show as always.

There is no other band like King Crimson in the world today, partially because of the absolutely unique playing styles of Robert Fripp and Mel Collins, and to a slightly lesser degree, Tony, Jakko, and the front line of fantastic percussionists – those virtuoso playing styles just set this band apart, and having that amazing back line of incredibly talented musicians is why King Crimson 2016, sounds so astonishingly good!

Beautiful music, made by the best progressive rock musicians on earth – spanning two generations, too – a band that is utterly unique with a remarkable canon of incredibly difficult and wonderful songs – long may they play those songs and allow us to hear – what a fantastic privilege listening to this band really is.

Sometime back now, I attempted to compare the two different versions of the Sylvian-Fripp live masterpiece,”Damage: Live” more commonly known as “Damage” – the live album record of one of the most remarkable musical collaboratations of the last century – “Sylvian-Fripp” – the band. I’d owned the Robert Fripp mix/version for several years, when I then had the opportunity to pick up David Sylvian‘s mix/version, released some years later.

I then sat down and listened to both records, first, in linear fashion, then, as an “A-B” – i.e. track by track, where possible. The differences are interesting – it’s not often that you get the chance to compare the “ear” of two such brilliant musicians, and it is interesting to hear how they interpret the same live show into a finished disc.

Anyway, from the first of the “long-lost blog drafts’, I now present to you, “the damage is done”, my freshman attempt at comparing two different versions of the same recordings…wish me luck!!

“Damage” (song) is the opening track on the RF (Robert Fripp)-produced version of the “Damage” album, whereas, on the DS (David Sylvian)-produced version of the “Damage” album, it’s moved to fifth position.

That’s not the only difference, however, it’s the only position change. There are the omissions, one song omitted from each disc – the RF disc is missing “Jean The Birdman”, while DS has included that track; and the DS disc is missing the 10.47 “Darshan (The Road To Graceland)”, while RF has included that track.

To me, the omission of “Darshan” really harms the DS version, and I can’t imagine what the reason for not including what is surely one of the highlights of the concert – the super long and full version of amazing-Fripp guitar, “Darshan” – I couldn’t believe it when I first realised that the DS version did not contain it !

For RF to omit “Jean The Birdman” is not nearly as distressing, it was, supposedly, the band’s “single” if such a thing could be, for a band like Sylvian / Fripp.

Doing an A/B compare of the two records is very revealing, but, it’s tricky, because of advances in technology, the DS version is much “louder” than the RF version, so each time I switch from RF to DS, there is an increase in volume, punch, bass – everything. I basically am trying to ignore that, and consider the content itself – the music.

Both versions of (title track) “Damage” are very, very beautiful, I can’t point to anything about either of them that I dislike, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful song, and OK, possibly, the vocal might be a tiny bit louder in the DS mix; and the guitars may be a tiny bit louder in the RF mix – but I would expect nothing less – the vocalist wants to hear the vocals, the guitarist, wants to hear the guitars.

Out of all of the tracks on the record, the two versions of the song “Damage” are probably “the most alike”, hence, I haven’t really said much about them, or their differences. They a

As for the poor bass player, well, he just has to hope that the mix will be kind to him – and in this case, both mixes are, when Trey (Gunn) comes in finally near the end. On the RF disc, “God’s Monkey” is track two, but on the DS Version, it’s the opening track (due to “Damage” being moved from track 1 to track 5 on the DS version). Now, I don’t know the reasons for this radical change to the running order, except to say, maybe DS is using the real running order, and Fripp used some artistic license in placing the two “quiet” songs as bookends of the concert – and DS wanted to make a point by restoring “Damage” to its rightful place in the centre of the concert – I do not know.

TRACK: “GOD’S MONKEY”

RF’s version of “God’s Monkey” starts with Trey’s distinctive bass riff, and the bass is nicely up in the mix, as are both Robert’s (Fripp) and Michael’s (Brook) guitars (not surprising, again – a guitarist is mixing the album!) but you can hear the vocals fine in this mix, maybe just because it’s the “familiar one” but I really like the way this is mixed, the vocal is up, the bass is up, the drums are good, and the guitars are powerful or quiet as required…it’s very well balanced.

Even Trey’s harmony vocal on the chorus, is very clear and concise, and having that vocal harmony reproduced live, is very helpful to the overall feel of the song, which ends in clouds of harmonizer / soundscape loop guitars from Robert, and a piercing, beautiful solo as well, with Sylvian and Brook supporting him beautifully – Trey is simply a rock on the bass at this point, as RF shreds his way up the octave doubler – fantastic speed and clarity, an awesome solo – then back to that great chorus, replete with Trey’s lovely harmony – you can’t go wrong with this mix, and Fripp is way up front during the final solo – but not annoyingly so – it’s just right.

Then, we have the DS mix – with all trace of the audience removed at the start – unlike RF’s mix, which starts with audience reaction to Damage still going on. So it sounds almost like a studio track, because of the removal of the crowd sounds – in the intro, the guitars seem quite loud, and there is some nice stereo Fripp, too. The vocal is clean, clear, and not any louder than in RF’s version – in fact, the balance between instruments is not terrifically different, I would say that possibly, you can hear the Sylvian and Brook guitar parts a little bit better in this mix, but other than that, they both give a satisfying reading of the awesome triple guitar attack of Sylvian / Brook / Fripp – I was lucky enough to catch their performance at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1990s, so I got to see and hear first hand, what a powerful triple-guitar-entity they could be.

When you add Trey into that mix, you really almost end up with Trey representing the fourth guitarist, as a lot of Stick or Warr guitar does involve multiple tapped parts that are not necessarily all in the “bass” range – so sometimes, it’s a FOUR guitar attack. The main guitar interlude sounds fantastic, Fripp’s ambient loops sound great, it’s really not that different from the RF version, except for the strange, slightly sterile EQ that makes this undeniably live track, sound a little bit more like it was created in a studio – which it absolutely wasn’t, but just the act of removing the crowd sounds from the track’s start, makes a huge difference in perception.

The final guitar solo, is mixed in a similar way to RF’s – Fripp is definitely featured, but the helper guitars from Sylvian and Brook are a bit louder than they are in the RF mix, or so it seems, but again, it’s just, in both cases, coming up with a sound balance and a “sound” for each track as they hear it, as an engineer, it’s surprising, I would have thought that these mixes might be radically different, and there are some audible differences, I think EQ and other treatments may have been used by either or both parties, to “improve” the sounds of any of the instruments, and there are some sonic tonal differences that are hard to pin down, even with an A/B test.

TRACK: “BRIGHTNESS FALLS”

“Brightness Falls” is our next victim on the table, in our dissection of these two disparate mixes of one of the best live albums of all time, “Damage” by Sylvian-Fripp – certainly one of the very best collaborations that Robert ever involved himself in.

I loved “The First Day” (“Sylvian-Fripp’s studio debut album) when it came out, it was amazing to hear Fripp’s guitar and compositional skills behind the ever soulful vocals of Sylvian, it just sounded great – that is, until “Damage” appeared a year later. It blew me away; on “Damage”, the songs from “The First Day”, were already transmutated from iron into gold, already transformed And wonderfully mutated into amazing live musical experiences by this remarkable band – there’s never been another band quite like this one – a wonderful compilation of individual musical characters, who’s sum was much greater than the parts, always. The live versions by far transcend “The First Day” as a whole, “Damage” is quite simply light-years ahead in terms of song development.

It’s almost as if “The First Day” was a test pressing, a musical sketchbook to sketch out the songs in a basic, crude form, but then, in rehearsals and in performance, on the tour,mine songs blossomed and grew legs, arms, feet, tentacles,and became immortal versions of those primitive sketches. I still to this day, struggle to listen to “The First Day”, if I should, it would be immediately followed by “Damage” to set the record straight. “Damage” shows the definitive versions of all of these songs, which just happens to make “The First Day” fade away into nothingness…

Along with revitalised tracks from “The First Day”, played with explosive excitement, there are also tracks from both Sylvian’s and Fripp’s back catalogues, including some where both musicians played on a track together – such as the tracks taken from “Gone To Earth”.

The RF mix has a lovely, lovely ambient outro, “Brightness Falls” live was incredible, with Robert building up an amazing live loop, which made the track more and more ambient as it went along, with the band keeping time beautifully with a lovely slide guitar part from Michael, and a constant and steady riff from DS himself. The song fades into just Frippertronics, or rather, a soundscape, and gradually disappears – until it suddenly transforms into a track originally on the “Rain Tree Crow” album, “Every Colour You Are”.

But we still have the DS mix of “Brightness Falls” to contend with, this time, I would say, all four guitars have been EQ’d or treated, and the lack of crowd sounds again, gives a sterile and studio-like sound that is both brilliant, but slightly disturbing – it’s almost as if there is too much detail revealed, I would say in the case of this song, DS’s mix is definitely a bit “clearer”, the definition between the three guitars and bass, is stunning, really, it sounds great – and when Robert takes a short solo, it’s just amazing – it sounds fantastic – panning madly across the stereo field – and then, back to the quiet, four guitars in perfect harmony mix level – as the vocalist works through the chorus again.

I think in almost every song here, that maybe, the vocals are a little louder, a little clearer, on the DS mixes, whereas on the RF mix, there may be some murky moments, and sometimes, the balance between the 3 guitars and bass, is not as clean and definite as it is in DS’s mix, but – to Fripp’s credit, DS had both, better, newer equipment, and – more time, probably – to tinker with the album – and in the case of “Brightness Falls” that tinkering has truly paid off – I am hearing things leading up to the middle section, that I have never heard properly on the RF version – the found voices that David was triggering from his synth, are much more audible here – really clear and nice.

The long outro with Soundscape, is just as beautiful as in the Fripp version, or maybe even a little nicer, because you can hear the samples a little better on the way out. It’s such a lovely, long fade down, you can’t really go wrong, it just sounds great in BOTH mixes – no clear winner here, although the DS does seem a bit clearer in terms of the guitars to bass balance – it’s clean. But RF’s mix is no slouch, either – Fripp’s mixes are as they always are, accurate, precise, and, with Fripp pretty far up in the mix ;-).

TRACK: “EVERY COLOUR YOU ARE”

So we now get to “Every Colour You Are” from the “Rain Tree Crow” – which was, of course, an unofficial “Japan” reunion – they (all of the members of Japan) all play on the record, but, they didn’t want to call it “Japan” – so, because this was a new band making a new record, they became “Rain Tree Crow” for this one album. It spawned a number of great new David Sylvian songs, and it’s great to hear the S/F band interpreting them on the live “Damage” album – now available in two delicious flavours.

Some slightly wonky delay slide guitar from Michael is mixed down a bit to try and distract attention from it, but he soon gets things together, and then that same slide guitar becomes a crucial component of the song – and there is then, that amazing drum roll from heaven, when Pat Mastelotto makes his presence known suddenly – that no one expects – right there in the middle of that beautiful solo – and then, the song settles back down to the two chord motif, and that amazing verse about the family man, who puts a torch to his house and warms his hands by the fire…remarkable.

I haven’t spoken much yet about the contribution of drummer Pat Mastelotto, because it’s just one of those things that you sort of take for granted, and maybe that’s the easiest thing to say – that he is solid, reliable, spot on, but still capable of lots of percussive surprises. He’s the perfect drummer for this sadly short-lived monster of a band, unobtrusive when he should be, powerful, precise and utterly, utterly focused on the beat, and on the song…and doing what is appropriate every single time.

I think Sylvian’s voice is equally compelling in both mixes, and despite some differing EQ’s and treatments on both records, it’s consistent and strong throughout, on both mixes. On RF’s, it’s mixed up well, along with the solo guitars, which are just beautiful – Fripp plays a blinder of a clean solo up to the insanely cool ending – I love that ending ! Dissonance shown as beauty…only Fripp can pull that off successfully (courtesy of that amazing, high-pitched, 2 octaves up reverse guitar) – and he does, indeed, pull it off, with the remarkable ending of this track.

This time, the DS mix does contain audience sound, but it’s the sound from the ending of “Brightness Falls” which abruptly ends, “Every Colour You Are” begins, again, with it’s odd EQ sort of studio-sound, which is then confused by an eruption of spontaneous crowd noise when they recognise what song it is – a lovely, very real moment, and both mixes include it – it’s a nice moment, and it works within the context of the song, because this song has a lot of space in it.

TRACK: “JEAN THE BIRDMAN” (DAVID SYLVIAN MIX ONLY)

Now, we have arrived at the point where the discs differ, in this case, RF Mix does not contain the next track, which DS mix does – the live version of “Jean The Birdman” – I can understand why Sylvian wanted this track, it was the single, and I think he wanted it to do better than it did (there was a single release of it) and to be fair, it’s actually really, really beautifully done, with sparkling guitars throughout, including really beautiful reverse guitar solos from Fripp – a great live version of a much-underrated song. Unfortunately, I can only comment on the DS version, according to Wikipedia, “Jean The Birdman” “replaced” “Darshan” from the earlier Fripp mix – but no reason is given.

In a way, it’s a bonus, because now, in a way, we get two unique live tracks – if you only had one of these discs, you would only have one of those two songs, so, it’s worthwhile having both mixes – if just to get “Jean The Birdman” live, if nothing else – it’s very, very well done.

TRACK: “FIREPOWER”

Now we are back in comparison land, and it’s “Firepower”, another track that started life on “The First Day”, but is utterly re-vitalised, featuring a killer, exciting, vocal; fantastic drum rolls popping from Mastelotto’s snare; Trey’s bass is supercharging the rhythm section, while the Sylvian / Brook / Fripp “Axis of Guitar Power”, continue to dominate, Fripp playing another blinder of octave up distorted guitar solo, followed by an incredible, dissonant solo with some very odd goings-on, samples from David’s keyboards, a lot of fabulous detail in the background – with Fripp’s guitar definitely in the foreground!

A snappy ending – that isn’t an ending; the song then starts over, with a Fripp Soundscape, Trey’s beautiful bass riff, and a nice, extended outro that is really, really lovely – just a great mood, Pat is steady, Fripp’s soundscape is being built brick by brick, Michael makes strange guitar sounds periodically, and David has his many samples – odd to watch him, in concert, holding down one key at a time, to trigger samples – but, that’s how it works. More ON FIRE guitar from Mr. Fripp, really beautiful Digitech Whammy II high pitched guitar work – this was also, for many years – my pitch pedal of choice, it’s not perfect, but, if you work at it, you can make it sound quite good.

The DS mix of “Firepower” – while perhaps, a slightly thinner sound, it comes blasting in, guitars a bit more up front, Fripp razor sharp guitar sounding even more razor sharp, the fabulous guitar solo, the dissonant section that follows it, sounding great – a bit cleaner mix maybe, and again, Fripp’s awesome high-pitched guitar melodies just buzz through the atmosphere – and at the end of the solo, a part that I don’t remember being on the RF version, just before the famous “false ending” (at 2:58) – a great riff (at 2:40 to 2:44) that brings the track down to its outro just beautifully – a very heavy and very precise riff, bringing perfect closure to both an amazing Fripp guitar solo, but also, an amazing guitar trio – especially the dissonant part of it – and it seems like the main body of the song is ending, but, instead, after 3 minutes of “song with guitar solos” we now move purely into the instrumental realm – “guitar, guitars, and more guitar!” – for another four minutes; with a lazy, beautiful rhythm from Trey and Pat, over which Fripp gets to stretch out once again with a very long, very lovely solo.

The long outro after that false ending, with Fripp’s beautiful sustained solo, could not fail to sound great no matter who mixed it when, and it sounds just as wonderful in the new DS mix as it does on the “old” RF mix – both are great renderings, they really are – and, a great performance of the song, too, from the whole band – that certainly helps :-).

And during that outro, be sure to check out what Pat gets up to, he reminds us, gently, of the power and majesty that he can inject into the proceedings at any time – and he doesn’t do so often, he is very careful never to overplay – always, subtle appropriate drumming – which he does so well – so when he does cut loose for a moment, here and there, it’s even more impressive than it might normally be – so, restraint much of the time, but, bursts of incredible drumming, with a rhythmic musicality that only Mastelotto can provide – he is unique, and I love his drumming style.

TRACK: “GONE TO EARTH”

Next comes a somewhat oddball song, “Gone To Earth”, which must take incredible concentration to sing, it has the oddest melody; and the oddest guitar parts, I hear it start and all I can think is, “what a weird, difficult, odd yet wonderful song!” but it has that beautiful vocal refrain, and the found voices over Fripp harmonics – wow, that’s just so beautiful…an oddity, yes, but I am so glad they dug it up, the title track of one of David’s most famous albums, and it’s mostly famous for its roll call of amazing guitar guest stars, Bill Nelson, Robert Fripp (on the same album – I mean, wow!) and Fripp is on a decent number of the tracks on the album – so he is able to reprise his parts as well, with better guitar technique, and more experience and technique of his own.

The DS mix of “Gone To Earth” differs a bit, the vocal is definitely higher in the mix, with Robert’s unique guitar intro comes flying in, quite a bit louder than on the RF mix, his distorted stereo lead guitars clearly to the fore in the very beginning of the track. The found voice samples are also a bit higher in the mix, which is great, I think in this case, despite my usual complaint about slightly weird EQ in the beginning of the songs, this may be superior to the RF version in some ways – although I love both versions. Sylvian’s vocal is particularly good on this track, and I don’t know how he gets his pitch “live”, but he does a beautiful job of performing this often-overlooked mini-ambient masterpiece from “Gone To Earth”.

TRACK: “20TH CENTURY DREAMING”

Now, we come to the fabulous, riffalicious “20th Century Dreaming”, one of my favourite tracks, originally from “The First Day” – as David sings – “social, economical, spiritual – I’m moving to the House of Love…” and he sounds very convincing. Fripp’s mix is very clear, bass and drums throbbing in the centre of the mix, while the three-guitar attack is blazing away in glorious, confusing stereo in the background. There seem to be three rhythm guitar parts during the verses – and then of course, Robert begins his ominous, low-pitched solo, and it suddenly moves into double time, razor-sharp, biting, beautiful, and intense in that way that only Fripp can be intense – one of his best solos, and in this live rendition, it rivals anything he ever played under the name “King Crimson” – I was so excited by this band, that when I saw them, I walked around for months afterwards saying that Sylvian-Fripp were very nearly as good, or possibly, better than King Crimson (I know – a moment of madness) – but, there is some merit to that opinion.

A fantastical Frippertronics soundscape underpins a long, ambient “non-solo”, with quiet vocals, quiet guitars, quiet bass and drums, the whole band sinks down, but, still playing with intensity, which then, once the vocals pause – builds in intensity again – “dreaming….dreaming lying down”… and Pat starts in with the most constant snare drum you ever heard, until suddenly, all hell breaks loose as David is moving, moving, moving to the House of Love – and Fripp and co are literally propelling him there – with some of the most amazing music I have ever heard. This song is so difficult to describe with mere words, the ambient parts, the soundscape is so incredibly beautiful, and Fripp soloing away, even when the drums and bass have silenced themselves, so it’s Fripp playing lead guitar, and reverse guitar, two octaves up, along with his soundscape…and suddenly, silence.

The David Sylvian mix of “20th Century Dreaming” again, has a different guitar sound, the stereo image of the guitars differs from the RF mix, which does make them feel fuller – not sure what adjustments were made, but, Sylvian’s mix does sound “different” – but it’s never “bad different” – it’s always “good different”. This song is a very, very long, very detailed piece of music, with a lot of elements to it, and capturing those elements, and mixing them well, was certainly a challenge, moreso than some of the shorter, more straightforward songs.

The Axis Of Guitar Power, that triple-threat of electric guitars, with two masters and one very capable rhythm keeper, young David Sylvian himself, it’s just the most astonishing sound you could imagine; Fripp, ominous, capable of blinding speed, and amazing displays of speed and musical accuracy, while Michael Brook provides anything from second rhythm guitar, on up to lead guitars, sounds, infinite guitar, ambient guitar, and just plain strange guitar, which compliments David’s very straight parts, and Robert’s intense solos, but, of course, there are really a couple more guitarists here, in the form of “loopers” – so Robert has his Soundscapes, which are used a lot on the album, and also, here in live performance, they are a critical ingredient to the success of the music played on “Damage” – it would NOT be the same without them.

So really, you have a quartet of guitarists, one of them, a beautiful, musically complex Soundscape loop, played over by our three heroes. “20th Century Dreaming” gives all three of them a workout, and Sylvian’s vocal is really beautiful here, the guitars and Soundscapes flying around in stereo around his head…a miraculous mass of music that should be overcrowded, but instead, just sounds perfect – in either mix, I love them both, no contest, this is such a good track, that you could just about NOT mix it and it would probably STILL sound amazing. A lot of work has gone into both mixes, I can tell, and it’s paid off, because there IS a lot of great guitar detail to bring out, and Fripp’s performance on here is just stunningly good – one of those where you shake your head and think “how on earth does he do that?

TRACK: “WAVE”

Now we return to the “Gone To Earth” album, for one of its loveliest songs, “Wave”, which features what can only be described as an “Heroes”-like, long sustained guitar riff, which makes repeated appearances, alongside various other guitar solos using various guitar sounds, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Fripp use so many different sounds live, in one song – he is changing his sound mid solo, even – but it sounds great. The Fripp mix is excellent, the lead guitarist is again featured, but, never overpowering the singer, it’s great to witness that in both mixes, Fripp never drowns out Sylvian’s vocal, and Sylvian never drowns out Fripp’s guitar – so there is obviously, mutual respect for the musicianship of each other there.

This is almost straightforward as a song, when compared to some of the very complex songs preceding it – with a few long verses, followed by Fripp’s “two different voices” solo, it begins with a strange harmonizer patch, then switches back to the trademark distorted, high-pitched, sustained guitar sound – a beautiful solo, and then back to David’s impassioned vocal, I am always surprised by “Wave” – “I’ll never let you down” – is followed by the most astonishing, “St. Elmo’s Fire” style Fripp “spinning guitar” at speed, and during the last few solos, Robert is absolutely scorching, wiping the floor with his guitar, I love this solo more than almost any other on the record – it’s just sublime – and, it takes us right to the end of the song.

Moving now to the DS mix, the drums in the beginning, sound completely different, and, it sounds almost as if vibrato has been added to the guitars in the intro. Fripp’s guitar, volume and tone, seems identical to the earlier RF mix, but boy, those drums sure sound odd in the beginning! In Fripp’s mix, they are mixed down to almost nothing, and their volume only comes up when the guitars start, in Sylvian’s mix, he has cranked the four bars of solo drums intro, up so far that it sounds like a different song at the start! Personally, I like the fact that I can now hear what Pat played in the beginning of the song, and I am not sure why RF would have turned it down so far !

David’s mix otherwise, like Robert’s before it, is true to the spirit of the original song as it was on “Gone To Earth” – in fact, all of the songs taken from “Rain Tree Crow” or “Gone To Earth” have all been faithful reproductions of the original studio works, with of course, better and more interesting vocals and guitars – particularly, Robert Fripp excels in the live environment, so what sounded good on “The First Day” – sounds GREAT on “Damage”; and at the same time, what sounded good on “Gone To Earth” sounds GREAT on “Damage”…superlative improvements plus live guitaring.

So in the case of songs from “The First Day” – there are changes, there are improvements, the songs are MUCH better across the board, on “Damage”, whereas, the songs from “Rain Tree Crow” and “Gone To Earth” are much more faithful renditions, sounding pretty much exactly like the originals…but better.

BRIEF INTERLUDE – (OUT OF SCOPE):

“Exposure”, which they also played at live shows, also sounded much like it did on Robert’s breakthrough album “Exposure” – except with David Sylvian singing the song instead of Terri Roche. Or, Peter Gabriel, as the version of “Exposure” on “Peter Gabriel 2” has. I loved hearing Sylvian sing that, and play the “E”, “X”, etc. samples from his keyboard, while Fripp reprised his loops and guitar – it’s such a shame that no take of “Exposure” was deemed good enough to put onto the “Damage” album – a real loss, as for me, at the live show I saw in Los Angeles, it was a huge surprise, and, a real highlight.

Note: there are bootleg recordings of Sylvian-Fripp concerts that DO include “Expoaure” the song, unfortunately since that track does not appear on either of these official releases of “Damage” that we are comparing here, it is outside the scope of this discussion.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>Return to album comparison>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

TRACK: “RIVERMAN”

So from “Wave”, we move to another track from the same album, “Riverman”, beginning with a very strange, ambient section, which then gives way to the song’s lovely, swaying two note bass motif, and wonderful, strange guitars in the background, Michael plays rhythm guitar and slide guitar, while Fripp plays high-pitched notes which become Soundscapes; Trey comes in with a lovely vocal harmony on the chorus, an underrated singer, I think he harmonises beautifully with Sylvian, and that is no mean feat, as David’s voice is utterly unique, and probably not easy to sing along with!

After the first verse and chorus, Fripp takes a very intense, heavy solo, that seems almost too heavy for such an otherwise quite gentle song, “run with me, holy man…” quite dissonant, a beautiful solo – then back to normal music – it works beautifully, it’s dead serious, quick, intense – and then, back to beautiful, super-high pitched notes being dropped into a loop. And then comes another short guitar solo, distorted, low pitched, with reverse elements, sounding just right – and again, back to the Soundscapes from heaven…drift away on clouds of ambient guitar.

This is the “slow moment” in the concert, or one of the “slow moments”, most of the band’s songs are uptempo, so it’s nice to have something that’s at a lower bpm, so we can hear this group of musician’s playing at something less than the speed of light, on a few tracks. Fripp is just great on this track, filling in the areas between the verses with powerful guitar solos, and then falling back into those atmospheric sounds, the wonderful high pitch notes that appear and then group together in a loop, then fade, then return…really beautiful guitar work, and, loops at the same time – an immaculate process, and Fripp really knows how to work these live-built soundscapes into a piece of music. An almost “Elephant Talk” two-note-Fripp-guitar calls a halt to the proceedings – and “Riverman” is over.

David’s mix, well, the intro is mixed up a bit more as usual, so you can hear the strange elements that the beginning is made up of, a bit better than you can discern them on Robert’s mix. Sylvian’s voice sounds more “present”, as if he has moved closer to us, which could be the result of almost anything in the studio, simply upping the vocal level, changing the stereo field, applying EQ – I don’t know what he does, but he always make his voice sound great, and, I also feel, he makes his three guitarists sound great – he manages to crank up Fripp and Brook, even more than Fripp cranked up Fripp in his mix, and that’s unusual, normally, Fripp’s mix would ALWAYS have the loudest guitars, by default, because he is a guitarist, of course, but not here, I think Sylvian likes these guitars so much, that he really cranks them up so he can enjoy them!

The solos in “Riverman” are brilliant, it’s yet another great rendition from the “Gone To Earth” album – in fact, the tracks presented here from that album, demonstrate that it’s a quality record that stands the test of time – and it really does. It’s probably my favourite David Sylvian album of all, although I am also very fond of “Brilliant Trees”.

TRACK: “DARSHAN (THE ROAD TO GRACELAND)” (ROBERT FRIPP MIX ONLY)

Then we come to our second anomaly, another song for which there is no comparison, in this case, we only have Fripp’s mix, and, it makes me feel very happy – this is the almost eleven minutes of “Darshan (The Road To Graceland)” and all I could think when I saw David’s running order did not include “Darshan” – I could not believe my eyes, or my ears. Removing that song…well, to me, it borders on sacrilege; because it represents Sylvian/Fripp at their most bleeding edge, testing the limits of a live groove with flying shards of screaming Fripp “Sailor’s Tale” or “Hendrix” style guitar, Fripp pushes himself, and this song, through an almost exhausting, and terrifically exhaustive, set of long, amazing distorted chords, delivered at speed, sliding up and down the neck with aplomb, bouncing of the fretboard – playing with it, pushing his own boundaries.

The band, is in an amazing groove, that runs pretty much without stopping, for the entire length of the song – giving both Sylvian and Fripp, plenty of time to do their individual singing and soloing. Sylvian is great on this song, I love his vocals, I love the chant of “Darshan” and “leaving on the road….to Graceland” that recurs many times, whilst Mr. Fripp is almost in a world of his own with his super extended impossible sliding chord exercise / solo. It is remarkable to hear, and, if you don’t have the Fripp mix, at this point, you should put DOWN your David Sylvian mix, and go order the Fripp version, so you can HEAR THIS SONG. That’s the best endorsement I can give, it’s absolutely worth it, to buy a whole CD, to get this one song.

At 6:45, there is an incredibly “interplay” solo between Michael Brook and Robert Fripp, that is just sublime, there are so many great moments of guitaring on this record…this particular back and forth is just awesome! Brilliant guitar work from both Fripp and Brook.

It should also be noted, that if you just have the Fripp mix, you should avail yourself of the Sylvian mix, so you can get a most excellent version of “Jean The Birdman” – which Fripp did not include.

But “Darshan (The Road To Graceland)” – is an absolutely remarkable song, and this performance, available on the RF Mix of “Damage” only, is a must-have recording if you love the music of Sylvian or Fripp, or both (as in my case).

TRACK: “BLINDING LIGHT OF HEAVEN”

Moving now toward the end of the disc, we come to a personal favourite of mine, at the time of the original Damage coming out, Damage was the only record in Sylvian’s canon that contained this next song, the incredibly beautiful and semi-erotic “Blinding Light Of Heaven” – which to me, is a real highlight on this record, it has some wonderful guitars, although nothing can top the aforementioned “Darshan” – Fripp’s solos in “Darshan” are absolutely off the scale, especially the final one – which you have to hear to believe….

But, back to the “Blinding Light Of Heaven” – it starts with a rocking beat from Pat, and a two note “Hendrix” hammer-on, some sliding guitars, and then, it acquires a great disco (really, I’m not being funny here – it’s really cool!!) rhythm guitar courtesy of David Sylvian, while Robert and Michael play great guitars in the background. “I’m in the shade, she’s in the blinding light of heaven….” And “…now she stands before me opening the buttons of her coat….I found myself, wrapped in the open arms…of heaven”.

It’s deceiving, it has a funky beat, with an almost-disco guitar, but to me, it’s a strange and wonderful piece of almost prog guitar work, especially when the second verse ends, and Fripp takes his first solo, which includes him TAPPING, and it’s just the most amazing, ripping solo, with those amazing trills, that slide right off the top of his top note on his top string – astonishing solo.

Fripp’s mix is very good, the guitars are getting louder, Sylvian is well audible but not up as much as in the DS mix, and now, here comes the second Fripp solo, this time, using the octave up pedal, and the tapping again, then – song over.

A great, great and sudden ending from Robert, such a concise little wonder of a song – “The Blinding Light of Heaven” indeed. The Blinding Guitars of Robert, more like. Now, to David’s version, his mix starts the same way as Robert’s (well it would, wouldn’t it) but again, the stereo on the guitars is better, Sylvian’s guitar has been re-EQ’d a bit, and the sound overall is a bit different, I think Fripp’s guitars may have had some stereo chorus added to brighten them up, otherwise, the vocal is a tiny bit higher, but not criminally so, if anything, Sylvian’s mix features loud, loud guitars, maybe louder than on RF’s mix.

This vocal, this vocal melody, is one of his best, and I think now, finally, you can get a “studio version” of this song, but I haven’t done so yet, because…I love this live version so much, so, very, very much, that I am not sure I want to HEAR any other version. Great bit in the middle, where the two note Hendrix hammer-on happens again, DS just cranks it up, it’s right before Robert’s even-more-impossible second guitar solo. And I love that sudden ending – it’s just brilliant! Great song, great performance – two great mixes, you can’t lose, you really can’t.

TRACK: “THE FIRST DAY”

Finally, we come to “The First Day” which is mainly a vocal piece, with sparse keyboard and soundscape backing, some short, long low distorted notes from Robert, the simple piano melody the perfect backdrop for one of David’s most heartfelt lyrics – the RF mix, was always lovely, and Sylvian’s vocal on this, the way it ties in with Robert’s very careful 2 octave up volume-pedal guitar, David sings “bring out the stars….on the first day” – and after the word “stars”, Fripp plays four descending notes, up high, that parallel the vocal rhythm of “bring out the stars”… and it’s just the perfect moment, it’s why these two work together so well, because ultimately, both of them live to serve the music, to serve the song, and this lovely Sylvian ballad is even nicer than the title track, in my opinion, I love Fripp’s clouds of soundscapes here, and Sylvian’s understated keyboards – both supporting that gorgeous, honeyed voice “on the first day…the first day” – which is a great way to end an album, with a song about the very beginning.

The first verse ends, and a beautiful piano and soundscapes section follows: a frozen moment of pure music, until David’s warm, warm voice comes back to melt the frozen moment, and then – a beautiful, beautiful high register piano sequence, with the most beautiful soundscape in the universe behind it – those little interludes between the verses just knock me out, they are very, very beautiful indeed, and this is truly a “Sylvian-Fripp” song, for me, it really represents the co-operation of two great artists, and Robert’s final, massive, distorted one note ending is simply sublime. And, yes, I have over-used the word “beautiful” in this paragraph, but it was the only way to properly describe it: truly beautiful.

The David Sylvian mix, as always, is a few dbs louder overall, as the entire mix is louder than the original RF mix, and while I suppose that’s “progress”, I am personally a fan of CDs that don’t blast your socks off, this quiet meditative song, isn’t improved by being louder, in fact, my instinct is to turn it down, so it’s closer in level to the RF mix that I just heard, but I refrain, I let it play out at volume, and it’s no less beautiful than Robert’s mix, if truth be told, those musical interludes between the verses are just as beautiful, the vocal is so present, so real, so central to the song, and this beautiful live performance, is yet again captured in this new mix as a beatific moment trapped in time, capturing the spirit with which Robert and David approached this project, as a team brought to life to give this music life, and this song, possibly above all others, is the perfect example of co-operation, bringing only what is necessary for the song to the song.

This mix does sound different, I can hear what must be Michael Brook, making some swooshy sounds with his guitar, that I didn’t really hear in RF’s mix very well, as always, the “guitars” mix in Sylvian’s mix seems to be a bit different, but in a good way. Since Trey and Pat don’t play on this track, you can hear the two guitars very well indeed, and especially in David’s mix – it sounds really lovely.

One thing I do love about David’s version of “The First Day” that is missing from RF’s version – is the very loud, very long applause that occurs after the end of “The First Day”, a very polite applause, respectful, which for some reason was removed from Fripp’s version – there is just silence after the track ends on RF’s mix. So it’s nice to hear the audience’s reaction, if for no other reason than to confirm that they saw a similar show to the one I saw, and I get all the confirmation I need from that applause.

CONCLUSIONS AND COMMENTS

For a long, long time, after see Sylvian-Fripp play live, I walked around saying to everyone that seeing Sylvian-Fripp live was almost as good as King Crimson live – blasphemy!! – but in some ways, it really was superior – more human, and, Fripp’s guitar playing is absolutely on form, particularly on the “loud” numbers (i.e. the whole album, basically, since there are really only two or three “quiet” numbers); the quality of the soundscaping is brilliant; and the guitar solos, from the amazing “Darshan (The Road To Graceland)” to “20th Century Dreaming” to “Firepower” to the not-present-on-either-mix “Exposure” – Fripp just excels, and also, the inclusion of earlier Sylvian works, in particular, the sublime “Gone To Earth” album, as well as Fripp’s back catalogue in the form of “Exposure” – that really rounded out the performance – the core of which, was the new material from “The First Day”, but mixing in a Fripp classic like “Exposure” (and, getting to hear David Sylvian SING it !!!), plus a few of the best tracks from “Gone To Earth”, plus, a “Rain Tree Crow” track – what a great set list, totally involving, and featuring an incredibly broad spectrum of truly remarkable music from across the distinguished careers of both David Sylvian and Robert Fripp.

So, it’s odd but interesting to get this David Sylvian “version” of “Damage”, I had no complaints whatsoever about the Fripp original, none, but, in hearing another vision of the album, it’s really fantastic, actually, because David “hears” the vocal mix and the guitars mix, a bit differently to the way Robert “hears” the mix – so you get some fascinating variations of guitars, especially – but in the end, all it means is, I’ve now got two very personal, very brilliant mixes, by two of my favourite musicians of all time, of one of my very favourite live albums EVER. Normally, you only ever get to hear one version of a live album, so it’s just double the pleasure, if you ask me.

So – a great set of music, if I had to make a complaint, it would be David removing the essential track “Darshan” from his mix – I really don’t get that, unless he was truly unhappy with the track from some strange reason – and for my second and final complaint – the omission from both versions, of the band’s live rendition of Fripp’s “Exposure” – which was a highlight of the live show, at least for me, because I never dreamed in a BILLION TRILLION years that I would see and hear Robert Fripp playing the song “Exposure” – live. I just – never thought it could happen.

And then, there I was, at the Wiltern Theatre, in Los Angeles, California, 1994, with Bryan Helm of the Dozey Lumps sat beside me, and suddenly, that two note guitar riff started up – and “Exposure” was underway. So those two “complaints” would be my only criticisms, otherwise, I’d say, if you like this band at all, you should absolutely buy both of these, because for one thing, that’s the best way to get the largest “set” possible, buying both gives you BOTH “Darshan” and “Jean The Birdman” – so it’s well worth the extra expense.

In conclusion, I absolutely enjoyed both mixes enormously, hearing them side by side, I could hear distinct differences, and wonderful similarities, and both Robert and David did an excellent job of representing one of the most amazing concerts I’ve ever seen, on one of those great, unknown live albums, “Damage” for me, is an absolutely brilliant live performance, and now, I can listen to it in two completely excellent mixes – more music, more different viewpoints – a nice addition to the very small “Sylvian-Fripp” section in my CD library – but, very unexpected, I didn’t even KNOW there was a David Sylvian-mixed “Damage” until I noticed it on the Burning Shed website.

A great band, a great performance, and one of my top ten live albums of all time – maybe top five, not sure, as I have never written down my top ten favourite live albums. Get them both – you won’t be sorry !

I came to the music of King Crimson in a fairly random way, I simply started buying their albums, without any knowledge of their running order, the players on the discs, or anything.

I think the first one I bought was “Red”, which I liked very, very much. Then, it was “Larks Tongues In Aspic” which had a huge, huge impact on me…and then, I bought “Islands” – which I thought was absolutely terrific, but clearly, cut from a different cloth than my first two acquisitions. After that, I have no idea what I bought, perhaps “USA” – because it was live – and that was another amazing disc – my gut feeling was, I like everything this band does (but everything this band does, is SO different) – from the remarkable and incredibly jazzy “Lizard” to the heavy prog of “Larks’ Tongues” and on up till the end – the live “USA” disk – strangely, with re-dubbed violins – we never really understood why that was.

Getting these remarkable discs out of order, willy-nilly, was probably as good a way as any to get into the band. Because it arrived very early in the rotation, “Islands” got played a lot, and I took a huge liking to it’s very honest song craft, with that AMAZING saxophonist (Mel Collins, of course!) as a guitarist, I was allegedly getting into King Crimson because of their remarkable guitarist (Robert Fripp, of course!) but I found myself really liking the bands that played behind Fripp, and not knowing what was going on at all, I could recognise the funky combo that performed on “Islands” as a remarkable working unit – a real band, which was clearly, very, very different to the african percussion and ambient percussion present on “Larks’ Tongues” – I could tell that “Larks’ Tongues” was indeed, by a very different King Crimson than “Islands”.

Of course, as time went by, I began to read the history of the band, and began to understand who it was I was listening to, was it the original “King Crimson”; the Crimson of the Big Red Face, that only existed for a mere 11 months, or one of the strange hybrids that followed on “In The Wake of Poseidon” and “Lizard”, finally settling down to a working combo for “Islands”.

And I think like many Crimson fans, I did, in the main, favour the triumvirate of “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic”, “Starless & Bible Black” and “Red”, all with the well-known four piece of Bruford-Cross-Fripp-Wetton, and for “Lark’s Tongues”, it was slightly unique in that it featured a remarkable percussionist who left the band in the middle of their first tour, Jamie Muir.

Once you understand the chronology, it all starts to make some kind of sense, although it’s quite difficult to assimilate the “first four” or the “first five” if you add in the live, and very rare and “Import Only” “Earthbound” which I had to special order from a specialist shop to get. By then, I had everything else – so “Earthbound” with it’s absolutely searing sax from Mel Collins on “21st Century Schizoid Man”, was the missing link between “the first four” the “last three”, if you will.

It’s interesting, I think, I always call it “the first ten” because that’s the classic package, of the band that existed roughly ftom 1969 thru 1974 and then called it quits. But if you think about it, Fripp did an unusual thing – he book-ended the two different eras with a live album.

So you get the “first four”:

In The Court of the Crimson King

In The Wake of Poseidon

Lizard

Islands

followed by, with some difficulty, the live album

Earthbound

Then you get the “last three”:

Larks’ Tongues In Aspic

Starless & Bible Black

Red

followed by, with some difficulty, the live album

USA

It’s an odd pattern, to say the least. Four studio albums, one very rare and hard to obtain live album, three more studio albums, followed by a brilliant live album.

That’s my classic “first 10” and for many years, that was all we had – the only other live material available was on expensive and shoddy bootlegs, and you were never quite sure about the information on such records, was it really at that venue? Was it really on that day?

Then, Fripp introduced the beautifully-covered “A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson” which gave us a lot of answers, it had an amazing booklet in it, where every gig the band ever did was listed by city and date – so that became our Bible, the only reliable, Fripp-produced list of gigs – and it was a really nice compilation, too, containing a rare demo version of one of their earliest tracks, “I Talk To The Wind” that featured Fairport Convention vocalist Judy Dyble on vocals – who was at that time, the girlfriend of one Ian McDonald.

It was a lovely compilation otherwise, a beautiful piece of artwork, but musically it didn’t present anything much that was new – it was definitely a look back.

So I guess that is the eleventh disk of my “original ten” if you will.

Once King Crimson reformed a few times, and Fripp started releasing better-quality bootlegs of the band, the full picture of King Crimson came sharply into focus. I could revel in any number of remarkable “Islands” bands shows, including one where they actually play the title track, something they very, very rarely ever did. I could hear this very funky quintet (the firth member being lyricist Peter Sinfield, who operated the VCS3 from the soundboard) and Ian Wallace’s mighty VCS3-altered drum solo became a huge highlight of the tours.

The “Islands” band was literally a group that could play from a whisper to a scream, Mel would put away his saxes, and play the flute, ever so beautifully and gently, and vocalist Boz would sing lovely Crimson ballads from the first four albums with real intent – I love his live performances of these classics such as “Lady of the Dancing Water” or “Cadence and Cascade” – Fripp disavows them, he felt that Boz was not a good singer for the quiet pieces; but that he excelled on the rocking ones – my own opinion was the exact opposite, I’m afraid. Sure, I love to hear this band roar through “Schizoid Man” or “Pictures Of A City” as much as the next guy, but when they turned down, and Fripp consulted his personal dictionary of tasty jazz guitar chords – Boz could do no wrong, if you ask me.

So after only having “Earthbound” to represent the music of the “Islands” band, for many, many years, it was a huge deal to suddenly be able to either buy CDs of their live shows, and / or downloads – a huge deal, because the limited view of what they were capable of “live” given to us by “Earthbound” could finally be laid to rest, and we learned very quickly that this band was a stomping, kicking beast of a rocker, but it was also capable of incredible, gentle beauty, as found in the two quiet tracks I mention above, along with rarities like the live version of “Islands” itself, which is an incredibly brilliant rendition of a truly beautiful song, and features even better guitar than on the studio version. Why they removed it from the running order so quickly, I will never understand, because it was so incredibly beautiful.

I would, at a guess, think that it might have been an issue with having just two mellotrons to try and recreate the orchestral mood of the studio track, but I think they do a splendid job, with an improved guitar part, and a great vocal from Boz, too. Again – RF has said that Boz “did not convince” on the ballads – but I do disagree, I think he had a beautiful voice for both rock and ballads alike, and that his voice was a godsend – he was the perfect lead singer for that band.

In any case, they may have stopped playing “Islands” live after just a few attempts at it, but they did continue to play ballads at almost every show, and some of those recordings are incredibly beautiful – because Fripp carries the tracks with his incredible, concise guitar arrangements, while Mel just plays really beautiful flute solos and the rhythm section plays quietly and accurately – it’s really about Fripp’s guitar and Boz’s vocal (and bass playing too, I should add).

So if you do get a chance to pick up some of the live CDs by this band, I highly recommend that you find ones that include a ballad.

Back in 1978, or whenever it was – out of an entirely random series of purchases, I would buy a new Crimson record each week, I somehow fell in love with “Islands” because, perhaps, it was so, so strange, with the incredibly jet-lagged guitar solo from “Ladies of the Road” to Fripp’s vibrant harmonium playing on the title track. This album also includes one song that the band never did perform live, because it was an orchestral piece written by Fripp to serve as an instrumental introduction to the final piece on the album, the title track – so what you hear is first, “The Song of the Gulls” which is orchestral/instrumental, followed by the vocal piece “Islands” which, I should add, contains one of Peter Sinfield’s most beautiful lyrics ever – I love all of his lyrics on “the first four” – but I have a special place in my heart for the lyrics to the “Islands” album in general, and the song “Islands” in particular – it’s truly beautiful imagery, and Boz’ gentle, quiet delivery makes the lyrics hit home so hard, just really gently and beautifully sung – there’s no other song quite like it in the Crimson canon.

It is, after all, the end of an era, because Earthbound, while it does have an outrageous version of “21st Century Schizoid Man” on it, is somewhat of a disappointment – it’s not in my top ten concerts by the “Islands” band.

I think it must have been an almost random selection, let’s just pick an “average” show, one of those ones where Mel is really kicking ass – and that’s what they did.

But – there is a lot more depth and beauty to be found, if you explore the world of live shows now available from this band – in particular, I recommend the earliest shows, where they have literally just come from the studio, and the songs much more, resemble the album versions, whilst over time, they began to stray wildly from the original forms, so if you want to experience the truest approximation of a perfect Islands band live show – stick with the earliest shows – the double CD at Brighton springs to mind as a good one, but you really can’t go wrong.

Even “Earthbound” has it’s positive moments.

For me, it was really, really nice to see King Crimson not once, but three times on their most recent tour of Britain and Europe, and to see that thanks no doubt to the ministrations of young Jakko Jakszyk, that Robert has indeed, made his peace with this record that at one point, he didn’t want to think about or look at every again.

So much so, that they now play two tracks from the record live, which is an astonishing and almost impossible feat – I couldn’t believe my own luck, I was not only going to see King Crimson play repertoire from across their career(s) but I was going to hear them play two songs from Islands as well – “Sailor’s Tale” and “The Letters” – and for me, that really felt like full closure – both Ian Wallace and Boz Burell have passed away, but Fripp in this way remembers them – and brings their amazing music to King Crimson fans via the 2015 incarnation of the band. I think that is absolutely brilliant! And the other player from the Islands band – is IN the new band, and it’s so, so lovely to hear Robert and Mel playing together again – Mel is an incredibly gifted player, and having him in the band has been absolutely brilliant.

I think that everyone knows and loves “In The Court Of The Crimson King” but then after that, doesn’t really know how to form an opinion of the band that made those next three records – “In The Wake”, “Lizard” and “Island” – each with different singers, different musicians, where only Fripp is the constant.

If we set aside the legendary first incarnation of King Crimson, and look at what happened afterwards – how the band changed in the studio – but that last incarnation, with Boz being taught how to play bass bv rote by Robert – he was originally just their singer – they couldn’t find a bass player – so he became the bass player! – they got it right, and the album they made, in 1971, still stands up today as an odd masterpiece of jazzy, blowing prog like no other. if you are not familiar with “Islands” – I cannot recommend it more highly – in some ways, it’s my favourite King Crimson album.

It moves between so many moods, the lyrics are outstanding, there are great guitar parts and guitar solos, there are great sax and flute solos – the combination of Robert Fripp and Mel Collins, both of them mellotron-playing soloists – was a very dangerous one, and one that created a remarkable record with an incredible edge – “Islands”. The record then travels through chaos until you reach the last two tracks on side two, when peace and beauty are restored in an incredible way – a truly gorgeous way.

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